It was my longest run yet. 19.34km. And holy hell, is it ever a long way.

I went out early Sunday morning in order to get my body used to pre-breakfast activity. Normally I hit the trail in the middle of the day — teaching classes that either start at 8am or end after 10pm doesn’t lend itself to morning runs — but with the half marathon in May I’ll be out the door before sunrise and through the starting line at 7am. If I haven’t done at least a handful of runs at that time of the morning, it’ll be hard to motivate on race day.

I sucked on a spoonful of peanut butter as I tied my laces, and packed my pockets with GU Chomps, and hit the Greenway. It was pretty much deserted for the first hour or so, which was lovely. Just after Science World, of course, I hit loads of traffic. Foot traffic.

The next two kilometres were less a run than a dance through a nefarious procession of running groups. There were dozens of them, mostly women in their 30s and 40s, clad in a veritable rainbow of neon lycra seemingly held together with thousands of dollars in GPS and water carrier technologies.

You can’t really blame them for hoisting those little hip-borne bottles, I suppose; the cities of Burnaby and Vancouver have yet to open up the public drinking fountains for fear of a late spring frost. It’s 18 degrees some afternoons right now, but lord all mighty, don’t give the people water — the pipes might freeze one more time!

I was sure to take plenty of walk breaks; every ten minutes or so after the first five K, I’d give myself a breather. Still, I found that the muscles between my shoulder blades ached for a couple of days afterward. My massage therapist tells me this is quite normal for long distance runners, especially when they move up a distance (from 10km to half-marathon, like me, or from half to a full 42km, for example).

As per the instructions, I ate a GU Chomp energy gummy every 15 minutes or so through the second half of the run. I didn’t hit a wall like in last week’s 15km, which was good. However, I found the Chomps inspired some pretty serious tummy pain later on in the day. A little digging finds that quite a few folks have GI discomfort after using the gummies, and that it’s usually worst when someone doesn’t drink water like crazy during the run. Damn, those neon lycra women were right after all.

Hydrate, you sorry bastard, hydrate! And maybe stick to the gel packs you were using earlier in training.

#118ForBoston

• Activity: Running
• Distance: 19.37 km
• Duration: 02:08:19
• Average Pace: 06:37 min/km
• Calories Burned: 1665