Yesterday was the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippor. One of the traditions of Yom Kippor is to fast from dusk the night before until it is dark the next day. It ends up being about a 26 hour time period of not eating.
Sometimes the fast is really difficult, however, this year it wasn't so bad. First of all, I slept a lot more than normal (I was asleep by 9:30pm and stayed in bed until around 8am!). The worst time for me was around 1pm or 2pm as we were finishing the morning prayer service - 19 to 20 hours in. Sound familiar?
I started speaking to a congregant who has run a few marathons and we were discussing how this was "the wall" and once we break through the next hour or so we should have smooth sailing to the end. Perhaps this is the time when the body finishes burning the calories of the last meal before the fast and starts burning stored energy (just like "the wall" during the marathon).
I'm not sure about this, but I tried to convince myself that this was good psychological training for the marathon. Get over "the wall" of feeling totally ravenous - and then after that feeling just focus on getting to the finish line.
We had a bunch of neighbors/congregants over to our house to break the fast last night. I think we may have had about 40 people in and out of our house between 7:30pm and 9:30pm - eating bagels, blintzes, kugels and deserts. I likely ate a full day's worth of calories in that meal (which I guess was fine as I hadn't eaten the rest of the day).
What I really needed after that was a run this morning!
What a great morning for a run. When I opened the front door to place my Garmin 305 on the stoop to search for satellites, I felt the crisp chill of an autumn morning. I started to rethink my choice of clothing - shorts and a running t-shirt. Should I go with long-sleeves??? I decided to stay in what I had on and just be a bit cool...after all of those runs in the summer, I must say I was ecstatic to not feel hot while running.
I ended up pushing the pace just a bit since the temperatures were cooling me down. My average HR was 151, which for an easy run is a bit on the high side - although not so high that this would constitute speedwork. It was nice to see my average pace also at a much faster level - 9:51/mile - to go with the higher HR.
I took a look back at the beginning of my training and saw I ran this same route on June 30 - avg pace of 10:36/mile and avg HR of 157. Whoa! This marathon training stuff has really kicked me into shape!
One other random observation from my run - over the summer I saw a house on my route with a big dumpster on the lawn (it was under renovation), and one of the people that was working on the house was sleeping in the back seat of his car just up the street from the house. The dumpster and the guy sleeping in the car had disappeared for a few weeks, but they were back this morning. Poor guy. I'm really close to knocking on his car door the next time I run by the house and offer him a bed in our house to sleep in. I'm not sure if Sherry will go for it, but I just don't feel right having this guy sleeping in his car.
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