Started the day with a 1 mile jog. Later in the morning, took Dakota with me to the Provo River Trail by Geneva Road to do an experiment with Ultima. The night before I mixed Ultima with fructose to see how my body handles this drink. A warm-up and then 15 mile tempo. 2.5 out, 2.5 back three times. The course looks flat but secretly rolls enough to be slow. Probably comparable to the rolling hills in the middle of the Ogden marathon. Dakota rode a bike and handed me my drinks. First 2.5 in 14:33 - no drinks yet. Back in 14:41 with one drink at about 3 miles. Next 2.5 in 14:29 with a mild tailwind an a drink at 5.5. Then 14:49 with a drink at 8 and a mild headwind. Next one in 14:43 with two drinks, one at 10.5 and one at 12. Now the moment of truth. Last one, give it all I've got. Turns out I do not have that much after all. 14:26, and I can feel emptiness in the legs. Tried to sprint on the last 200. 41 seconds was all I had. Total time for 15 miles 1:27:41. Conclusion. Ultima + fructose does not cause any damage, but does not do any miracles either. The glycogen left the leg muscles at a normal rate. The early intake of the drink did not restore or hold off the muscular depletion. I felt good enough to keep going at 5:55 pace for a while, but the gear that requires muscular glycogen was essentially gone. There was some poor semblance of it up to 13.5, but then it was gone bye-bye. Good to know. Need to taper and make sure to eat very well before Ogden. Cooled down 1 mile to make it 17 for the whole run. In the afternoon, ran with Benjamin and Jennifer. Jennifer set a record on the mile - 9:17. She also set a record on the half - 4:15, 400 - 1:51, and 200 - 53 during her kick. Benjamin really had to work to be one second ahead of his little sister. Little feisty furious red-haired Jenny... In the evening, when it was already dark, I decided to do my always on the run mile. It was too hard to resist the temptation to measure my muscular glycogen levels. So I decided to run the last half mile hard. Of course, I knew the results would be skewed because it was dark, I had only 0.5 mile warm-up, and I was wearing street clothes. Nevertheless, I decided to do it just for fun. First quarter was 1:31 - really hard to get going. I finally got going on the second somewhat and hit it in 1:27. The muscles felt they had some fuel, more than at the end of the 15 mile run, but not a lot. 20 miles for the day, and 90 for the week. | 