No Race to the Stones

I just wanted to give a quick update since I haven’t posted in several weeks.

My last post was through Weeks 7-9 of training for a 100km trail race – Race to the Stones – this summer in England. What I didn’t mention in that post was something that happened after my long run the day before I posted that update.

Throughout most of my training, the long run had been giving me issues. Whether physical or mental or fueling, only one or two of the long runs were anything approaching comfortable. The 50km race in May, which I talked about in my last post, was very tough but having gotten through it in one piece, I was determined to take the same approach for the 100km. Just get it done, no matter how long it took me.

But then at the end of May, I went out for a long run – 21 miles. I had my fueling and hydration all set. I had refills of everything and snacks at home to take a short break, if necessary.

I started out slowly to try to conserve energy and work my way into the run. It was warm, but not hot. But even with that, from pretty early on in the run, the effort that it felt like I was putting in didn’t match the pace I was actually running or how I was feeling.

At 15 miles, I stopped at home for a full change of clothes and some actual food. Taking about 30 minutes at home, I felt like I could go out and finish the remaining six miles. So back out I went. Eventually, I finished the remaining miles to get the 21 miles done for the day.

After cooling down and changing clothes again, I went out to get something to eat. I felt tired, but the normal kind of tired after a long run, and thought that some food and then a shower would have me feeling better.

Shortly after I sat down to eat at the restaurant, I started sweating profusely. And then my vision started getting blurry/white. Something definitely wasn’t right. I tried to eat and drink a little more as this continued for a few minutes. Somehow, I managed to not pass out, but it caused quite a scare for me.

After I was feeling good enough, I drove home, showered and relaxed for a while. I was feeling OK, except for a headache. Most of my thinking the rest of that day and the next few days revolved around ‘what could have caused that episode?’ and ‘how the heck am I going to do 100km in less than 2 months?’

The following week, I scheduled a doctor’s appointment just to make sure that everything was ok. After a couple appointments with different doctors, there were no concerns.

During the week or so that I was waiting to finish up my doctor’s appointments, I was still running, but very short distances and even easier paces. I was feeling good enough on those short runs, but the episode was never very far from my mind.

Between the episode and the final doctor appointment, almost two weeks had passed of very little training.

With all of that in mind, I made the tough decision to defer the 100km race until next year (at the earliest).

Yes, it was a tough decision, but it was also definitely the right decision.

So, after three months and over 450 miles of training, I am back to just running easy and whatever distance and/or pace I feel like on any given day.

I enjoyed most of the training and was looking forward to a different type of race.

I also enjoyed and am happy I completed my first ultramarathon (50km) in May.

And I also found a new place to run – on some local trails – that can be a nice alternative to road running sometimes.

The whole experience is definitely something that I can build off of for my future running and races.

I’ll still be going to England and getting some good running in while I’m there, and I’ll share some of that in my next post.

But for now (if you’ve read this far), I want to thank everyone again for the support during my training in the first half of this year!

If you enjoyed reading this or any of my other posts, please share it with someone you think might enjoy it also!