The Great Gatorade Experiment, Take 1

For the record, I don't care for lemon-lime gatorade. However, that's what they usually serve at races, so in an effort to try to become accustomed to the flavor, I'm doing an experiment. Gatorade was on sale at the grocery store this week ($1.29/bottle instead of $2.29/bottle), so I stocked up on lemon-lime (and some other flavors that actually taste good). That meant that this morning when I went to the gymnasium for my 8-mile run (eek!) I brought along a water bottle filled up with the gross green liquid.

I gotta tell you, running 8 miles on the treadmill isn't really all that fun. It certainly doesn't sound like fun, so I'm not sure why I'd ever really think that I'd enjoy it. My biggest annoyance about this run was that somewhere in between miles 2 and 3, I realized that my heart rate monitor was flashing my heart rate at 55. So, um, that seemed wrong. I wore a tanktop with a built-in bra and somehow the bra part had found its way in between my heart rate monitor strap and my skin, which was causing the problem. I managed to fix it while still running and not flashing everyone at the gym, so that seemed like a good thing. I'm a little disappointed since I don't know how long that was going on and it threw my calorie and heart rate stats off for the day. Oh well. There are worse things.

Somewhere between Miles 3 and 4, things started to get hard. I definitely struggled for that mile or so, but then definitely turned a corner for the end of the run. I managed to do 6.25 miles before I ran out of time on the treadmill and the last 1.75 miles went by in a blur. It was generally "easy", which is to say that I didn't mind it at all. Probably mostly because I knew I was nearing the end!

As for the gatorade ... it was okay. I can't say it was good or even great, but okay seems like a good step. It did have ice cubes, which watered it down when they melted, which probably made it better. The thing that I actually didn't like was the fact that I normally drink water while running on the treadmill (it's really dry in the gym) and the sugar in the gatorade made my mouth a little bit sticky. I will say that I was pretty thirsty (as usual on the treadmill) and I didn't really notice the icky taste since I was more concerned with whetting my whistle. Take 1 of the experiment has been a success!

Running
Time: 1:22:50
Distance: 8.00 miles
Pace: 10:21/mile
Calories: 945*
Maximum HR: 179
Average HR: 163

*99% sure this calorie count isn't quite right, but it's probably in the ballpark. I'm sure that having my heart rate at 55 for some unknown period of time made this a little bit off.