Still Feeling the Affects ... ???

(For those questioning the grammar of this entry's title, I never can sort out the difference between effect and affect. Can someone please give me an easy way to distinguish?)

Today was my worst run ever! I felt absolutely lousy!

I left the office around 7:30 to run 8 miles along Buffalo Bayou. It didn't take very long to know that it wasn't going to be a good run. I could see I was slow on my watch and more importantly could feel that there wasn't going to be much I could do about it. No matter what I did to spur myself to pick it up, I couldn't sustain anything. It was a VERY frustrating feeling. So I resigned myself to slogging it out while just trying to enjoy being outside. ... difficult to enjoy much based on how I felt .... So I made a mental list of excuses for what was happening. Here are a few:

• Even though my legs felt fine from Saturday’s long run, my body really hadn’t recovered.

• The past two Saturday’s 18- and 20-milers had taken a cumulative effect (or is it affect???) that finally caught up to me.

• My glycogen stores were absolutely tapped leaving me with absolutely no “fuel in the tank”.

• This morning’s weight lifting workout pushed me to or over the limit. My trainer bumped my leg press up another 25 pounds.

• I am suffering from major nutritional deficiencies. Maybe two long runs tapped me out. Saturday afternoon I ate a big pile of junk food for about the first time in over 6 months (justified myself with the fact that I’d run 20 miles earlier that day). I ate the wrong foods and I overate in a big way. On Sunday the pendulum swung the other way. Since it was the first Sunday of the month, I ended up not eating much all day long (although Paige made some lovely marinated turkey steaks for us Sunday evening!).

• It was hot and humid. These are probably a bit flimsy as excuses since I should be somewhat used to it by now and it wasn’t overly extreme. The temperature was around 86 degrees with 68% humidity.

• Work is quickly becoming a pressure cooker of stress as the September 15 deadline approaches.


So with this tremendously bad vibe going, I did something that I haven't done before. I cut my run short by a mile. It made me mad to do it but it seemed like the right thing to do.


7.32 miles @ 9:49 (1:11:52)