Well, not that kind of guy! 😄

I’m part of a FB group affiliated with The San Francisco Marathon called The Run Experience. A guy from the group posted that he’s coming to Toronto and was looking for recommendations on where to do his 16 mile run. So I invited him to join the Ninjas and to PM me if he was interested in doing a pre-run with me. To my surprise, he agreed!

I knew that this could be a very bad idea cuz, you know, there are a lot of weird people out there. But I figured, what are the chances?! I decided that the risk is worth it because I’m desperate for anyone to run with me! 😄

Turns out he is a great guy and he’s also training for TSFM. He was jetlagged (it was 4am SF time when we met up), is not used to runchating, and usually runs a ~6:44 pace so I was impressed with how well he kept up!

It was good that we took a lot of water/walking breaks. I drank so much water and was still so thirsty because it was so hot. I started with 3 bottles of Nuun and 1 bottle of water. I refilled 3 bottles at the store after 12k, refilled 2 bottles at the tennis courts during the 2nd 10k, and refilled 4 bottles at the store again before my last 6k. I don’t even know how much water that is but it’s a lot!

Jim took a detour to pick up some Timbits and he caught up to us running a sub-4 min/km pace. That guy is a machine! When we got back to the store, I had a couple of Timbits (Thanks Jim!) with a lot of water and Jim went with me for a final 6km.

Running with Jim is the hardest. I know that he typically runs much faster so I was trying to run as fast as I could under the circumstances. I was super tired by then and it was starting to get really hot which meant I wasn’t able to run very fast at all. But, as usual, Jim pushed me beyond what I thought was possible and I made it to 28k with a strong-ish finish.

When I got home, I was still super thirsty (how can that be?!?!) but I had to leave right away to take Ainsley to a birthday party. I chugged some chocolate milk, took a banana, and out I went again. I treated it as my cool down walk. I showed up to the birthday party all sweaty and gross. I’m sure the other mom was like…what happened to her?!?!

When I got home again, I was still thirsty so I chugged the first thing I saw in the fridge. Lucky for me, it was a can of coconut juice – yay electrolytes! Even after all this fluids, I still felt thirsty all day. Lesson learned: I can never have too much fluids!

Nutrition log:

• Pre-run: PB&J sandwich
• Mid-run: 2 pieces of sesame snaps, 1 GU chew, 2 Timbits, Nuun, lots of water
• Post-run: chocolate milk, banana, coconut juice, apple juice, water