A.M. Ran with Derek, dropped him off, then ran alone, then ran into Justin White and his friend Chris, ran with them a bit, then more alone. Decided to try race pace for 0.5. Hit 2:44 going down about 0.5% grade. Felt good. Carefully listened for the signals of neural fatigue, but heard none. At least over 0.5. Finished 11 miles, then ran with the kids. First 1 with Julia in 10:30. Then we loaded Julia and Joseph in the double stroller for me to push, and put Jacob in the single stroller for Benjamin to push. After the first 60 meters Benjamin said that Jacob was a lot heavier than he had thought. That sounded suspicious. I checked out the stroller, and sure enough, the break was on. We fixed that, and kept going. Benjamin did better than I thought he would. 12:54 for 1.5. That is 8:36 pace average. The combined weight of Jacob and the stroller was probably closely approaching Benjamin's own weight. Jenny, of course, had to take advantage of the chance to show off and pulled ahead in the last third of a mile finishing in 12:38. I stayed with Benjamin. Good to know that in case of emergency we could cover a 5 K at 9:00 pace without the aide of a motor with all of the five kids. When William is born, we will need one more seat in the stroller, but hopefully by then Julia will learn to ride a bike. I have been taking in a lot of Powerade lately, and it has been going in very well, never making me feel like I've had too much. Makes me wonder if the latest neural fatigue struggles were from a very subtle carbodepletion. Or another way to look at that - something happened that increased the brain demands for glucose, and not receiving enough the brain responded by limiting running performance. I've had this happen before. In any case, the practical implication is that the body needs to be fed a lot of carbs. Five Fingers - 1047.33 miles.
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