Dehydration and sore knee

I knew it was too good to be true! The dream run of training ended this morning when I had a very average session. It was supposed to be my medium long run and 16km was scheduled, so I got up and hit the road, but my left knee and right calf were really hurting whenever I tried to go at a decent pace. Plus I was just feeling generally unwell and found it really difficult to concentrate on moving fast. It was a real downer after such a great week of training and my excellent long run on Sunday.

There's probably many explanations - the longest ever week of training last week, plus going extra hard at Pain in the Domain yesterday probably took it's toll on my body - explains the knee thing. And I realised halfway round that I was really dehydrated. Thinking about it I didn't drink nearly enough water in the morning yesterday because I was in a meeting for ages, then I set off for Pain and it was a really really warm day so I sweated buckets. Back in the office I was running around like a headless chook so never caught up on my rehydration, then didn’t drink much before I went to bed. I woke up thirsty but didn’t want to have fluids sloshing around in my stomach on the run so only had a sip. Silly boy! But there was a lesson to be learned and it’s good to at least know the causes of the bad session.

This morning's run was just on 16km and supposed to be marathon pace (4.40), but was instead very slow – 6.00min pace for the first half, then I tried to negative split it and averaged 5.30 pace for the return trip but I couldn’t manage any faster than that. I came home and drank about a litre and a half of sports drink (which didn’t even touch the sides) and have been going hard on the fluids all morning to rehydrate.

It’s all good feedback – to keep on top of my hydration, not to push long sessions too hard when I’m feeling good, to realise that sometimes it takes a couple of days for the effects of mileage to sink in to the body. I think I’ll take a rest day tomorrow to let the knee recover enough to be able to put in a solid run at the Striders 10km race on Saturday.