Tour de Heat

Okay seriously, where did the weekend go? I swear it’s like I blinked and it was gone. Probably had something to do with the fact that it was so chock-a-block full of stuff to do and absolutely no lallygagging time whatsoever!

As soon as I was done work on Friday, Mario and I booked it into East Van to meet up with Charly and Gavin for Free Beer Fridays and then later went for dinner at Les Faux Bourgeois, a quaint French Bistro that Mario’s been eyeing up, and that Charly, who’s been a few times already, has been salivating over. Her drool was not over exaggerated. The food was amazing. I had the portobello parmentier, followed up with chocolate mousse = yum! A great precursor to the real deal 😀

But as great as the evening was, and it was so great, I learned a very troubling thing. I am not as young as I used to be. After only having two beers and one glass, maybe one and half glasses of wine, I was buzzed, and the next morning, I was suffering a bit of a hangover. Yikes!

But what better way to cure a hangover than to go shopping in cute, little Fairhaven with my moms and sister.

Moms needed a new dress for an event she’s going to in Atlantic City, and Jules and I were there to say yay or nay to the dresses she tried on. Funny though, how it was I who walked away from Fairhaven with two dresses in hand! But the town is just so cute, with the most irresistible little boutiques – I couldn’t help myself. And besides, I needed a new dress for a wedding I’m going to in September anyway … cause none of the dresses in my closet would have sufficed, oh no 😉

And then Sunday, ohhhhh Sunday, my 29 km day!

SUNDAY’S RUN:

• 5:30 a.m. BG before: 10.6
  
• 7 a.m. BG (a/f breakfast): 9.3
  
• Distance: 29 km
• Time: 3:31:49
• Average pace: 7:10 min/km
• Fuel: @ 45 minutes: gel. @ 90 minutes: gel. @ 2:15: 1/2 pancake. @ 3 hours: 1/2 pancake
• 11:30 a.m. BG after: 9.5
  

Now, 29 km is one thing, but 29 km in 34 degree heat, with no shade from the firey hot sun is just pure insanity. Thank goodness we have amazing clinic leaders who not only set out the water cooler at the halfway mark which was stocked full of ice cold water and ice cold gatorade and ice cold baby wipes, which were amazing for cooling down the searing hot body, but because Carol had to turn back from a sore hip 🙁 she also drove out to the 26 km mark to refill our water bottles with more ice cold water – which was huge at that point.

The heat was absolutely brutal, just stagnant, dead air, with hardly any wind reprieve. And after the halfway mark, when I had discovered the brilliance of dumping cold water down my back, I kept squeezing bits of water from my water bottles onto my face and onto the back of my neck, but unfortunately for me, tepid water just isn’t the same as ice cold water.

I started to mentally struggle at about 18 km. I didn’t want to know how far we’d gone, or how much farther we still had to go, and yet my head, which has never been one to willingly do math, kept doing the equations, which was just killing me. But then something happened, I don’t know what, but when we hit the 21 km mark, and I only had single digits left, suddenly I was good to go.

Mind you, when my running chicks (smartly) opted to walk up the overpass hill, I couldn’t. I didn’t know if I’d be able to start running again if I had. I’d already been out on the road for 3 hours, and I wanted nothing more in the world at that moment than to be done. So, I surged forward. I ran through the sprinklers. I ran past the sweaty, half naked dude. I ran to Carol for a water refill and a pep talk. And then it was just me and the pavement.

And as most of you know, I’m not a dirty hippie, not even close. I’m not about the peace, love and happiness blah, blah, blah. But for those last 3 km, I did embrace my happy place, I had to. I started talking to my grandpa! I told you running that far and in that heat makes people go crazy. But even crazier, I think he actually did push me forward – especially in that last kilometre when I thought for sure I was gonna hurl after taking that swig of warm Ultima, which I tried to swallow but couldn’t for the life of me and ended up spitting out, just like a princess 😀

As soon as the run was done, I had to book it home for a shower and then out to Steveston, another super cute little village, to have lunch with Mario and his Uncle Pete, who used to be professional cycle racer, and who came out from Kamloops to watch the bike races in Steveston. Best storyteller EVER!

What is your best mechanism for beating the marathon mental madness?