Long Run Agony

Due to my achilles problem problem I have been taking things easy on the running front. Actually I haven't run at all for two weeks and my last good long run was four weeks ago. Yesterday I decided to see if the rest had worked and I was able to run again.

First up was a nice gentle run into work, 6K with no hills. Things felt fine, a little slow maybe but I was taking it really easy. There was no pain from the ankle at all. Since everything was OK I thought the obvious thing to do was to go for my normal long run on the way home. Before I had my problem I had built this up to 2.5 hours of running. Rather than do the sensible thing and slowly build back up to this I just went for the full distance straight away.

Unfortunately, as well as missing my running, I have been quite slack on all the rest of my training for the last month so my fitness is not where it was. I don't know exactly what went wrong on the run but about one hour in everything started to go pear shaped. My legs began to feel really stiff and sore. I felt really tired and had no energy at all. Of course I pushed on and it slowly got worse and worse until I finally got home. My total run time was 2:23 and it hurt like mad.

Looking at the details from my Garmin I can see where I start to slow down around the hour mark. It seems strange to me that I went down hill that soon into the run. I suspect it could be related to nutrition because my energy levels felt so low and I have been absolutely starving all day today, despite eating loads. Next week I will have to plan for something a bit shorter I think because this session is taking far too long for me to recover from.