Hard lesson learned

Sat was a very busy day at the station, and a hard lesson was learned on the nutrition front. It was hard, but very informative for my sake. With the Seattle Firefighter stair climb coming up next week we had one more fundraiser to do. This was the same as last week at Costco. I missed last week as we had some child care issues and I couldn't get out there in time. But this Sat I was there, and got my stair climb on. To be fair, this was the one and only official day of stairclimbing I've done to prep for the event. I've been too busy training for this triathlon thing that I haven't given the stairclimb any training at all. I ended up doing 20min on the machine in all my gear and did, according to the machine, 71 flights of stairs. 2 more flights than the building in Seattle.

            After the Costco event, we had a few more calls to run, and then I was finally able to attempt anther 40/10 brick. That's 40k on the bike, followed by a 10k run. I've done these a few times before, but this time I was going to be using the Gu and was really excited about trying it out. I did a long swim the other morning coming home from work with nothing more than a Vanilla Bean Gu in my system. The swim went AWESOME! I easily could have kept on swimming, but I needed to get home so I got out of the pool.

          Back to the brick. I had some Roctane in my water bottle, lots of water in the Torhans with a refill, and a Gu pack on the treadmill and next to my shoes. The bike went awesome, I was putting out some really good times and pacing quite well. Pushing myself, but nothing too hard, or so I thought. I got off the bike and ran to the bathroom before jumping on the treadmill. That bathroom break should of been my first clue that something was a little off. I've never had to pee that bad while on the bike. I know I was putting the fluids down, but I didn't want to get dehydrated. I was sweating, so I was drinking. Unfortunately, I think I drank too much on the bike. I went through my 30oz Torhans and then prob another 10oz or so in the almost 25 miles. Not to mention the 24oz of Roctane. I definitely flushed my system a little too well and the run was about to hurt.
       I've done enough bricks to know that the first mile to 2 miles are horrible coming off the bike. My shins are super tight and it takes a little bit to get them to cooperate. This run was no different, except my calves were also screaming at me, and my low back was stiff. I attributed my low back to the heavy workout a few days earlier. But the calves were something new. This was the first time that I've had to slow down and walk, and get off the treadmill to stretch. Nothing seemed to help. I would rest for a min or 2, and then be able to run for a min or 2. It was terribly frustrating for me. Mentally, I was sharp and ready to crush this 10k, but physically, my body was saying no way Jose. It was just after the 3 mile mark when the crazy train decided to take a stop in my left quad. My quad totally locked up on me. Not cramp, but lock up. I've never had a muscle EVER do that; and now it was happening to a big muscle. With the quad locked up, I finally realized what my body had been trying to tell me before. I needed salt, and salt NOW!!!

  I hobbled into the kitchen at the station and grabbed the salt shaker. I poured a heaping mountain of the much needed goodness into my hand, threw it back into my mouth like a Tequila shot with a chaser of water. The next min saw my quad loosen up, but it would still be a few more before I was really feeling better. I finished the run, but it wasn't pretty. It was a very hard lesson to learn, but I'm glad that it happened in training and not during a race. I will soon be ordering the Gu electrolyte tabs and maybe getting some salt tabs just to make sure that never happens again. I can only blame myself for what happened. The Gu was working great. Mentally I was ready for it, my salt content on the other hand, had other plans. Here's to learning the hard way, Cheers!