Races

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Fueling?

I managed to hit the 22 mile mark today but it was not pretty. Even with being out the door at 6:30 this morning it was already hot. There hasn't been a whole lot of wind for a week now and everything was pretty stagnant as I ran out of the marina. Since I haven't put in any big miles recently I decided to run this one mostly to prove to myself that I could do it. I took it slow and stayed on the flat roads. To run 20 miles in Tortola you have to do some hunting for flat roads. Even with the flat course I was looking a lot in sweat. From Nanny Cay I ran toward Road Town, through the waterfront and to the roundabout heading out of town. There is a 5 mile turn around there and a gas station where I fueled up with a water and an apple juice. I can't drink Gatorade or sports drinks primarily because I don't like them but I also because when I drank them in high school for soccer games I would cramp up afterwards. I choose to drink juice, usually apple, because its full of sugar that's easy to burn. I ran the 5 miles back to Nanny Cay and decided it was really hot and dealing with finding water on the way was a pain that I didn't want to deal with. I headed to the little gym at the hotel and set up to run the next 10 on the treadmill. Being Tortola the treadmill was pretty old, squeaking and the belt kept slipping. This is not how I wanted to spend the next 10 miles. I debated about waiting for the afternoon to finish the remaining 10. As a squall rolled through and rain came down I made up my mind to head back out on the road. I had saved the better half of the run for the second part anyways and took a left out of the driveway this time. Soper's Hole Marina is 6 miles down the coast road and is a good refuel and turnaround spot. I ran down with a water bottle strapped to my wrist with a hair band. I bought another juice and refilled my water bottle for the 6 back. I finished and felt ok but I am curious about what I should be fueling with during or before.
The water bottle on my wrist thing is working pretty well but it can't be too big or it gets really heavy to have on my arm. I am not doing any kind of food fuel and I think I need to figure something out.
What do you use to fuel before or during a long run? Do you stop and drink and move on or keep running? What do you do for food? Candy? Gu's? 

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