Giving SiS A Go

Tuesday: Awoke this morning with the body begging for more rest and no running. Tough, I told myself, I need the training. I made up the SiS drink last night and put it in the fridge to keep it cold for the run. A hot day again but with very cool, refreshing winds. I sipped the SiS before and during my run. The orange flavour was tolerable, better than the berry-flavoured Powerade. I covered 3.04km in 20mins 51secs; today's run felt okay, partly due to the SiS, partly due to the cool breeze. My body felt heavy at intervals, even though I did very little uphill. The run ended with me exhausted and sweaty but to a lesser extent. Slow pace today but the main thing is to focus on endurance - feeling exhausted a third of the way through the race is not reassuring. The right calf ached intermittently, my mistake not to have applied calf gel before the run. It was a generally better run, in how I felt during and after. My friend thinks my body is struggling with the recent hot weather and I am inclined to agree, which is what the doctor implied. The SiS drink is designed to replace essential salts/electrolytes lost during running and I am sure it helped today, not sure how much, but I will be trying it again before the race, then possibly for race day. I hear the forecast is cooler temperatures for race day, which would delight me, my training log tells me I run better on colder days, even rainy days. I am looking forward to Sunday, my 3rd race, I don't feel the level of nerves I had with the first two, I think. Perhaps slightly nervous about the volume of runners on race day possibly being a bit overwhelming (3 x the number that did GER) though I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere at GER. I won't have my brother or someone with me pre-race as with GER but I know and accept I will do most races on my own. The main nerves centre around my performance, the desire to run the whole race and not walk any of it. I'm hoping to find time to drive around the race route tomorrow, something that I like to do now to help calm the nerves and increase my confidence. Anxious to know that doing 3 or 4 km tires me out in training, wondering how I can hit 10km non stop on race day. Sometimes best not to think too hard about it, the stress is no good for hair loss. Good to know I have support in running from my brothers, though my mother and mother-in-law have begun to stress themselves unnecessarily, convinced I am 'over-running' and endangering my health. I think the low blood pressure issue and blood tests have triggered this, they were previously fine with my running. That, however, is something for them to deal with; time is ticking for GMR and my focus is on that. I have all my running gear for the race, race number has arrived, as has the timing chip. The only thing I need to do is perhaps buy more SiS for the race. I have an assignment due shortly after the race, which is a good distraction for me right now, if I can stay awake long enough to do it. My son is currently going through the potty-training process which is another useful distraction for me, keeping me busy and not thinking/stressing too much about the race. A few days till the hat-trick.