Saturday, June 13, 2009

Review: Clif Shot Block & Unsheduled, scheduled run

Today I was scheduled for a 6 mile run, but nothing I did today ended up being planned. I woke up late (8:30am) which means I'd be running in the heat. Not having slept well, I got up and around quickly, going out the door pretty groggy. It was hot.
My friend texted to meet her garage selling. I didn't exactly feel like shopping for junk, but I also wasn't feeling like running at all. I felt tired, hurried, I hadn't eaten, hadn't sipped coffee, and mostly unorganized. I decided to meet up with her and put off running for a few hours telling myself it was already hot and a few hours wasn't going to make much difference.
We ended up driving to the nearest city and retail shopped - until 4pm!
Going home, we both relayed how tired we were. I laid my head against the car passenger seat and planned my run for tomorrow.
Then, I remembered I wanted to try out my Clif Shot Blok. The directions said to take one before running, and although I never did that with GU products, I thought it might create some energy and help me salvage a run tonight.
I ate one. Ugh. Hard to get down. Overly sweet. Overly soft, like a jelled syrup. Whew! I swigged a little of my watered-down soda. You're suppose to eat this with a good amount of water, but I don't have it on me.
I decided to run the 6 miles. I hopped in my car and headed for the Beaver Lake Trail to do 3 loops of 2 miles. I figured that paved running would literally be the path of least resistance.
Within a mile of starting out, I felt nausea. Enough nausea to double over, hoping to throw up, only to stare at a dead, black lizard. Instead of the relief of hurling, I unfolded back upright and kept moving forward. My stomach stayed upset for most of the run and the swealtering heat just added to that discomfort.
I ended up detouring from the paved path onto a dirt obstacle course. This is a totally old-school ARMY obstacle course where the idea is to run from point to point, stopping only to hurl yourself over logs stacked up at varying heights or pits filled with water. Needless to say, I skipped that fun. I walked a lot.
I saw a fuzzy, white rabbit tail hop into the darkened forest. I saw lots of blackberries starting to juice up and turn from red to black. I got scratched until I bled on my legs and arms from said blackberry bushes (at least I think that's the culprit). I sweat salt into my new wounds. My head pounded so much that I couldn't listen to my ipod. I felt dizzy. My stomach ached on and off. My body lagged. I worried that I had gambled on pushing a crappy run instead of waiting for the next day. It was just really sucking. Until..., it wasn't.
On the 3rd lap, I all-of-a-sudden felt good. So good that I thought about throwing 2 more miles on the fire, making it 8. I basked in this new found delirium..., until the tiredness came back and I realized I was mistaking good for just better. I felt better, that was all, but not well.
Coming into view of the last bit of road I thought about how bipolar runner can be during training. The highs and lows, the goals and revisions of those goals as you delve into more miles. Getting off the roller coaster, I walked into the parking lot, to my car and was just glad to be done today.

Review for Clif Shot Blok: I felt nausea, but that's not all that uncommon for me and GU type products. I also didn't have the water to dilute it in my stomach. I felt perked up after it got into my system, but it was short lived and I wondered if it was simply a sugar (brown sugar syurp) high. But, I also had been really, tired today and additionally, I'm not exposed to a lot of sugar in one sitting like that. - Although I'd only had two of the bloks (not even a serving). I will say though, that for the first run in a long time, my legs felt GREAT. No cramping, no tightness, and really they were the least tired body parts. I was running on paved ground however, which is an eleviation from the difficulty of unpaved surfaces. Soo... I will try the Bloks again, with water, and see how it goes.

Update 2010: I now know that I can't eat Clif Blok Shots or take Ibuprophen or Aleve or drink Powerade. I had thought back then that if it didn't have corn syurp, I was okay. I now know that citric acid, salt and other additives come from corn. I probably was having an allergic reaction in this run (dizziness, tiredness, nausea, etc).

1 comment:

  1. glad to see your run ended great! I had a rough saturday run too...but no happy ending until it was the ending.

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