I haven't spent as much time blogging recently as I would have liked but now that I've reached my goal weight I'm sort of struggling to find content. I also wasn't sure if you wanted to always read about how I was training for the next race, which since I've basically been training since mid-January for one half marathon or another that got a little tiresome to me. However, yesterday I was supposed to don my favorite orange and blue Team Challenge singlet, lace up my beloved Brooks Adrenalines and pound out 13.1 miles.
Except... things sort of fell apart for me. As you may recall for the June half marathon I struggled with dehydration and some really bad cramps in my calf muscles. For a few days I was relieved when the weather was predicted to be cool and humidity would be low. Then I read the weather on Saturday and practically cried. I'd planned my hydration strategy based on seeing my husband twice while on the course and then found out he had to leave the course by 9 am. When I started to think (some might say when I started to panic) about my pace I'd wanted to hang with the 2:20 pacer which would have put me at a 10:41 pace. Even assuming that I'd leave the start line at exactly 7 am I feared I wouldn't see my husband a second time and would miss being able to get the additional hydration that I'd trained with. In addition to a few other factors the panic started churning and so did Morty (my pet name for my Crohn's condition).
I'd gone to bed early because I was supposed to be up at 3:15 am in order to make it to my friend Kim's house by 5:00 am for the trip to the city. I "slept" (and I use that term pretty loosely cause I'd close my eyes and have a nightmare for about 18 seconds, wake up panicked and then repeat) for about an hour before I actually woke up and really hit the panic button. I felt completely wiped out, and like I wanted to throw up. And then the abdominal pain (another symptom of the horrible Morty) hit me and I gave up.
I woke up Dan and explained what was happening, grabbed my throw-up bucket in case it got really bad and tried to explain between sobs that I couldn't run. At the time he agreed and told me that it was alright but that I had to put my health first. I sent a text to my friends Kim & Barbara to tell them what was going on and then cried myself to sleep.
I knew that I'd basically just sent myself into a flare for stressing about what I couldn't control and I hated that I'd trained for the past 2+ months only to quit. Clearly, this also means that I'll be back for another season of Team Challenge to help raise more money so that someone can find a cure for this stupid disease so I can just worry about a half marathon the night before without going full on into a flare.
Congratulations to all the people who were able to go run the race. You guys rock! And I'm jealous of the sweet bling you got.
On a totally unrelated note... my question to you this week is:
What kind of content would you like to see on my blog going forward?
Gelande Quaffing
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