lessons learned...

This morning's run definitely taught me a few lessons.

I ran my first seven mile run this morning, my furthest run to date. And it was tough.

Lesson One:
1. dont drink two glasses of wine and a beer the night before a long run. And if I do drink , I need to drink more water along with it.

I have never before felt so thirsty on a run. I felt beyond dehydrated and that made for a rough seven miles.

Lesson Two:
2. Body glide aka anti chaffing stuff is AMAZING.

On all my long runs I have been having some serious issues with chaffing between my thighs (sorry if this is TMI). Shane was at Dunhams yesterday and was nice enough to pick me up some body glide for my run today. I really cannot say enough of that stuff. I didnt have any troubles at all. It was fabulous.

Lesson Three:
3. My body needs to learn how to refuel during a run.

Before today I had never messed with any sort of running "fuel" aka Gu or Shot Bloks, etc. Today I tried Gu for the first time. I took it at 3.5 miles and it was...interesting. I dont think the flavor was bad. The texture was not terrible, but definitely not pleasant. I think what really threw me off was that I had been carrying the Gu in my arm band for the run, and so it was very very warm. And that was the grossest part about it. I dont know that I felt much different after other than I got some stomach cramps around mile 5.

Lesson Four:
4. Its amazing what a difference it makes when you have someone to talk to.

Pam called me right after I took my Gu, and I was so glad to hear her voice. I put her on speaker and asked her just to talk to me for a bit bc I needed the companionship and the motivation and the distraction. She talked to me through the rest of mile three and all of four. And it definitely gave me a boost. When we hung up I knew I only have two miles to go, and I could so handle it.

Lesson Five:
5. A tablespoon of peanut butter is an excellent before run snack.

When I woke up I was immediately hungry. And this is not normally the case. Normally I go right for my run when I wake up and I dont even think about eating before. But today I knew I needed something. I knew if I ate something solid I would get crampy during the run. And so I tried a spoon of peanut butter. And it was perfect. It kicked my hunger away and didnt upset my stomach at all.

So, those are the lessons I learned on this first ever seven mile run. I wish I could come up with two more so that I had one for each mile, but thats all I got.

Before I go, a quick shout out to Erika! She PRed in a half marathon this weekend! Congrats girly!