Victoria Marathon Training - Week 10

Another pretty good week of running. Sunday I ran the longest distance so far in this training cycle - 17 miles - in the beautiful, rural town of Sidney, BC, just outside of Victoria. My Dad has a house there and it's also the location of my fall primer half-marathon, the Landsend Half Marathon on September 14th. So I decided to run the race route and my Dad came for half the distance on his bike.

The route is very scenic and interesting. There's a fair amount of agriculture in the area...

...and plenty of big hills! I did notice most of the big ones were during the first half of the course. There was one in particular around mile 4 which was about a mile long. Another important hill occurs around mile 8 and is very steep but short. It was very nice to run alongside the ocean at Patricia Bay and feel the breeze. I think the gorgeous surroundings will make the race more fun even though the hills present a bit of a challenge.

After an hour and a half with me my Dad changed places with my boyfriend Ian, who drove by to meet us. I didn't take any pictures of the biggest hills, I guess I was too busy just trying to either make it up or run down as fast as I could! A few notes about this first really long run:

-total time: 3:02:19 -Ate a lot of pizza the night before (veggie) & 2 packages of instant oatmeal 3 hours before the run -I drank a total of 2 litres of water mixed with gatorade (1/2 a scoop per 500 mL) and ate 3 Clif Shot Bloks during the run -I did not run out of energy, but my legs , feet, & hip joints became very sore and tired by around mile 13 -No stomach issues during the run -I TOTALLY crashed (mentally) about 2-3 hours after the run and needed to eat a date square to get myself functioning again -I had some GI issues later in the day