Today's plan was to run up Emigration and to work in about 8-9 miles at MP. Since we were planning to take the kids up to Snowbird early for a little "Stay-cation" (I hate that term), I got up at 4:40 to get ready. I decided to try the Generation UCAN product again to see if I wanted to use the product for the marathon, so I drank 24 oz. while I got my water and other gear put together. I also had a small banana. Because I was worried that the waist belt might throw my back out again, I decided to take my Camelbak instead. The first couple of miles felt crappy, as usual. After that, I started to warm up and get used to the climb, but I still didn't feel great. I started paying attention to my splits around mile 3-4 and they were in the mid-8 range, which is a little slow for my easy runs up Emigration. I maintained a similar effort to my usual easy runs up the canyon and watched my splits get slightly better, but only slightly. Normally, by the time I'm at 5-6 miles, I'm under 8 min/mile and getting faster each mile. Today, though, I seemed to top out at 8:06 pace with the same effort. By the time I got to the Pinecrest turnoff at around 7.5, I could tell that something just wasn't right. I went another mile and decided to turn around and cut the day short at 17. When I stopped to turn around, a woman came cruising down the other side of the road. I took a drink, stretched for a second, then headed down, expecting to catch her very quickly. Since I wasn't feeling like myself, I decided not to try to start blasting down the mountain at MP, but to slowly work up to my pace and see how it felt. I gradually increased the pace but was not gaining much on the woman ahead of me, so I upped it a little more. I finally started catching her on the steep section just below Pinecrest, but I was at about 5:40 pace at that point and it wasn't feeling good. After I got well ahead of her, I settled back to what felt like a normal MP effort, but the splits were far above what they should have been. What normally feels like a 5:45-5:50 pace was translating to a 6:20-6:30 pace. Recognizing that a solid MP session was not in the cards, I just kept the effort steady the rest of the way home and the pace stayed roughly the same. I felt kind of wiped out by the time I made it home--just like I felt the last time I tried to do MP after taking Generation UCAN. I think I've used the stuff four or five times now, and I'm ready to render a final verdict: the stuff is as good as poison for me, and I'm not planning to touch it again. Anyone want about $30 worth of the crap (I made the mistake of ordering it in bulk)?
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