that was me for 11 miles, as i ran on the gravel path along the canal. the run itself was pretty uneventful, which makes it one of the best runs i guess. the light was perfectly golden, the morning air felt heavenly on my skin, and it was much easier to breathe compared to my mid-day run yesterday. there really is nothing like running in the morning while the rest of the neighborhood sleeps. it's like the whole world is yours. only yours.
my watch was acting funky so i don't have any accurate splits to report. only that i finished in 2 hours and 10 minutes.
i also did a gel taste test. i've used sport beans and powergel in the past and have found that while the beans are tasty, they don't give me enough energy. and they're hard to eat while running. the powergels are okay but i feel like they're too big and sometimes too sweet. so this week, i brought along a tangerine powergel (with caffeine) and a vanilla gu. the gu comes in a smaller package, but the sales lady warned me that it would be thicker than the powergel. how could it possibly be thicker?!?!?! blech!
turns out though, the gu won out. and not just on flavor. (tangerine was way too sweet). the gu's thicker formula actually made it less messy and surprisingly faster and easier to choke down. or maybe that was the vanilla flavor that made it easy to eat.
i've got 9 more powergels to finish and a couple sports beans too. but after that i think i might be a strict gu only girl. hopefully the other flavors aren't too sweet, because i don't know if can stick with just vanilla my whole life. plus the vanilla doesn't have caffeine.
6 comments:
Your run sounds heavenly. I know what you mean about being alone out there on the trail while the rest of humanity, or at least those in your locale, are still in bed. It's kinda cool.
There's a kiwi-strawberry gel that I like a lot. But I can't remember who makes it. A lot of help I am, right?
What are the beans? I've seen sports-gel things that look like gummy bears -- is that what you mean?
nice work on the 11 miles! I find that I prefer GU also, and i've tried several flavors and like them all (I can't look at them all though or I get grossed out lol)
sounds like an awesome 11 mile run. You'll totally be prepared for your half-marathon next month. I love that "I'm the only one awake and the world is mine" feeling.
Your post inspired me to actually try to eat a Gu on the run rather than just using it for recovery. In the starting corrals of the Miami Marathon some woman basically told me I would "die" around mile 20 since I had never used Gu, etc before. I didn't want to try the first time during a race, but I bought a mix of Gu and Clif Shots afterwards. The Clif Shots are mostly organic and a little less sticky. otherwise they all seem pretty much the same.
Nice job on the 11 miles! I haven't tried the gus yet, and am afraid of the texture, yuck! I have tried the beans and I can see where it would be difficult to get those down while running! I just tried them between a run and going to spin...
What an awesome run! I cannot wait to hear about your upcoming half-marathon.
It's also nice to get a real-person's take on gels, gus and beans. Since I'm such a novice at everything, I'm still trying to figure out what products work and what will make me cry!
Keep kicking butt, girl!
Actually, Vanilla Gu does have some caffeine (at least in Canada -- I don't know about down there). I tried another flavor of Gu yesterday -- Espresso Love. It tastes pretty good and it has twice as much caffeine as the other flavors. Still, I think I prefer the Vanilla flavor.
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