Mira Bexley

So the summer paces are not a step backwards, they are just being paid for differently.

Two mouthfuls of water is almost certainly the problem. A standard gel is a very concentrated sugar solution and it needs a real dilution to leave your stomach, otherwise it sits there pulling water into the gut, which is exactly the heavy cramping feeling you are describing. The rule of thumb I was given is 150 to 200ml of plain water per gel, and drinking it over a minute or two rather than a gulp. Also check the carbohydrate type: gels with a glucose and fructose blend absorb through two pathways and are much easier on most people than glucose-only ones once you are taking more than one an hour.

If it persists after you fix the dilution, it is worth a conversation with a sports dietitian rather than more brand roulette. Some people genuinely do not tolerate fructose well and that is a solvable problem with the right advice.

Check whether that container is the one with a long migration on startup. I had this with an app that ran schema migrations for 90 seconds and answered on the port immediately but returned nothing usable.

And keep the SMART history somewhere outside the box. Watching reallocated sectors go from 0 to 8 to 40 over a fortnight is much more useful than the number today.

Something practical: run easy runs with someone slower, or on a treadmill at a set speed, once a week. Externalising the pace decision breaks the habit faster than willpower does.

If it comes back after the scrub, look at one disk in particular. Run a long SMART test on each and watch the pending sector count. A single failing drive drags the whole array down to its speed and often shows no errors in the pool status until much later.

If it keeps happening after you have fixed fuel and volume, get it looked at by a physio rather than diagnosing it here. Calf tightness that is that reproducible sometimes traces back to something further up the chain, and that is not a thing anyone can see from a text post.

The habit matters as much as the calories. Your gut has to be trained to absorb while running, and race day is a bad time to find out it cannot.

Whatever you change, do a restore test afterwards. A backup you have never restored is a hypothesis.

Different view: two pairs beats one pair at 40km a week regardless of which two. Rotating gives the midsole foam time to recover between runs and it changes the loading slightly, which is easier on your legs. I would take two 70 to 80 shoes over one 130 shoe every time.