Breakfast and Long Run Debrief

Reward awaiting long run completion

The timelapserunner thought he offer a bit of a debrief from today's long run and first use of the Amphipod RunLite AirStretch 2+. But first we want to spend a few moments talking about breakfast. I love breakfast. Always have. Grew up learning to love breakfast. I remember those early mornings before school. My brother and I would get up and head to the kitchen where Grandma would be waiting to serve us a warm, filling meal. Oh, those mornings were so great. Between the two of us - my brother and me - we'd eat nearly a whole loaf of bread - either French bread or regular toast bread. Buttered heavily. We'd dip the buttered bread in an extra-large cup of piping hot café au lait. Now that was breakfast!


Then I'd get on an oatmeal skein, eating oatmeal for breakfast for four months in a row, then grits, then cream of wheat, then corn flakes - each one for months at a time until I burned out on that particular breakfast and moved on to another.

I still do that, a bit anyway. You can see my typical breakfast these days in the pic above. Breakfast consists of either corn flakes or Cheerios with a banana and blackberries, with poured skim milk. I have another 8 ounces of milk to drink with the cereal and fruit, and an Atkins protein shake thrown in on those days when I actually run (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays). It's hard to see, but there's also a multi-vitamin tablet there in the spread as well. One day, it's Cheerios. The next day it's corn flakes. And so on and so far. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam, Ad libitum. Etc.

I haven't a clue how many calories this adds up to. I have never and will never count calories. I count too many things at work to have energy for counting calories. But this breakfast tastes very good, especially after a long run. Like today's.

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Some observations from today's 7 mile long run ....

I noticed that it was longer than my usual runs. Duh. Well, that's to be expected. Not "Oh, God, when will this be over?" longer, just longer. I enjoyed the run. Ran through campus when pretty much no one was there.

My first two miles were a bit faster than I wanted, but not terrifically so. We were supposed to go at 14:44 pace on average, with 13:18 run portions. First two miles were closer to 14:00. Found my pace to be a bit bouncy, but the Garmin watch is not quite as useful for instantaneous pace when trying to go this slow. Using the current mile pace is a bit better, but if you're only jogging for 30 seconds at a time, it's not much help either.

Drank water from the Amphipod twice, maybe 7 ounces total. Not really sure I needed to drink. Mouth was a bit dry, but as a mouth-breather, that's kind of par for the course. Sensed that some of that was heading to my bladder, something which I really do not want to see more of. Needing to urinate on a long run or during the marathon itself will not prove convenient.

The Amphipod fits snugly and doesn't bounce at all. This is good, but of course I am moving incredibly slow out there, so I'd be disappointed if there were an issue. Still, I believe I could probably run at 10:00 per mile pace and not have a bad experience. Used only 2/3rds of one bottle; none of the other - so volume should not prove to be a big problem, at least not from this observation.

All in all, a fairly good experience - but these runs will get longer.