Failed long run. But, the actual reason is pretty epic. Report upcoming in a little bit....
So......
Wife and I were planning a long run for this week. She was off for most of the week, it's 1 month before the HM, and figured this would be a great time to go for the 20 mile run. So the plan was at least 18, hopefully 20. Luckily the "winter storm" never really hit us hard, only had some ice yesterday and nothing overnight, so today wasn't bad other than a little cold and windy.
We decided to drive to the main park here that we've run lots of times. It's 5.5 miles around, so practice getting nutrition every park lap, stopping at the car and doing a GU and some water after each lap. 3 full laps plus another 3.5 mile loop that I know and boom, 20 miles. Plus, it allows the chance to abort if needed. Picked up a few different GUs to try them out. Had pancakes this morning, got the kids out to school, and then back home to prepare for the run. Drank plenty of water all morning, ate an apple, did the band aids and body glide, loaded up the car, and headed out. Everything was all going well.
Got started with our run and I was feeling great. Legs felt perfect, HR was nice and low, and we decided to keep it nice and slow as it was just about getting the time and distance done. First lap very uneventful. Got the first GU in, got some water. Had to stop to pee about a mile later and then was feeling even better. Until.......
We get past the 9 mile mark and I started to just feel funny. Looked down and my HR is like 132. That's not it. My legs feel good. But I felt like I was floating. And after a minute or so I realized that there's nothing really wrong other than the fact that I'm feeling really hungry. At that same moment, my wife goes "you know, I'm getting really hungry". And then I looked at my watch and I realized it's like approaching 1pm. The problem was we normally go to run right after dropping our youngest off and get started by 9:30-10am and finish by noon. We didn't get started until 11am and we ate breakfast at 7am. Just really didn't think about it.
At this point, we're both realizing that 20 just isn't going to happen. We figured we'll get to the car and call it a day and drive to lunch. Except I'm realizing we are REALLY hungry. My wife is craving a burger. I'm craving something similar. It's also close to where we used to live and there's a neighborhood restaurant with awesome burgers and sandwiches and wings. I tell her that it'll just be faster if we run there than run to the car and drive somewhere. And then I realized that when we get there, we're going to have to wait for the food. So we stopped running so I could call the restaurant and place our order and then finished our run making a beeline to the restaurant.
That's it. 20 miles impossible today because we were hungry. Everything else felt just fine. So we aborted, got there and had our food within a couple minutes and polished it off as if we hadn't eaten in days. Ran the final 1.5 miles to the car and drove home.
We'll try again sometime, but definitely earlier in the morning.