Training for the Tower of Terror 10 Miler

With the Kelowna Wine Half Marathon behind me the focus is now on the Tower of Terror 10 Miler.  Neil and I are running this one for fun together the first weekend in October.  The tricky thing about this race is we are running the Mickey’s Happy Haunted 5K trail race early Saturday morning, then the 10 Miler starts at 10 pm on Saturday night.  Morning races are easy because you roll out of bed, eat your tried and true breakfast and then go race.  For nighttime races you have an entire day to mess up your nutrition, made even worse by the fact that we will be in Disney World!

This weekend Coach Angie gave me a double run on Saturday.  30 min early in the morning with 5 min zone builds followed by a 7.5 mile long run later at night.  I got my 30 min run done nice and early.  The end part of my zone builds were tough as I felt a bit wheezy, but otherwise I nailed my run.

Knowing that the most important part about being ready for my run later would be recovering smart I made sure I had a snack ready in the car to eat right away.  I tried a Nutz over Chocolate Luna bar for the first time and it was delicious!

PS – the long sleeve flyte?  Love it!  I need to get my hands on more colours!  I figured a coffee would be appropriate at this point in time too.

With coffee in hand I went home and tried to eat breakfast right away.  I wanted a good mix of protein, carbs and fats so I microwaved a couple of eggs with toast and an apple on the side.

Neil and I talked about what we should have for lunch that would tide us over until a run later in the day.  Last year for the Tower of Terror we had a Cobb salad at Brown Derby for lunch.  It agreed with our stomachs so we’ve got lunch reservations for the Brown Derby set up again for race day.  So we made a Cobb salad on our training day too!

I realize it might not be the most healthful of salads but in moderation it helps to keep us full all day.  And we may as well practice for race day as best we can!  After lunch I put my feet up on the couch and relaxed and hydrated.

Neil and I made our way to Edworthy to kick off our long run just before 8 pm.  I downed a GU just before we got started.

I switched up my run/walk intervals to 5:1s since that is what Neil has been doing.  Our run was going really well!  My legs felt great and the intervals were clicking off quickly.  I looked around at the setting sun and mused aloud that I really liked this whole evening running thing.  What I sort of missed the boat on was that we were taking off just as the sun was setting and that it would get dark fast.  No more of these lovely long daylight hours!  All of a sudden we were running under Crowchild Bridge and I realized it would be pitch black soon.  I got a little scared so Neil and I agreed we’d turn back.  

Fear is a great motivator on the run and I picked up the pace on the way back.  No complaints from Neil though!  We were going to add on another out and back but it was really dark out here.  I was kicking myself for not thinking about wearing a headlamp.  There were several cyclists riding on the run path without lights and that was adding to my anxiety.  As soon as we made it back to the car we called it a night. 

I was a little disappointed as I was feeling great and my legs would have liked to have run the entire distance.  My stomach felt great and I was well fuelled too.  Oh well, I’ll get another shot at it next week!

Are you running the Tower of Terror 10 Miler?  How are you prepping for running a nighttime race?