Well that sucked

Tweet

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?

Half Marathon Update - Week 7

Tweet

Week 7 of half marathon training sucked because I was sick.  I only got out 3 days last week.  I suppose the good news is that of those 3 days all 3 of them were days that I got good solid mileage in from running rather than cross training but I was still disappointed with the lack of training that I was able to do.  Between battling a cold/sinus infection and the rainy weather over the weekend I was really looking forward to ending week 7 that is for sure.  So, here's what I was supposed to be doing last week:

Monday: Run, 4 miles
Tuesday: Cross training or Speedwork
Wednesday: Run, 5 miles, Start easy build to fast finish
Thursday: Strength
Friday: Run, 30 minutes, Medium Effort
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Run, 7 miles

Here's what I actually did:

Monday: Run, 4.66 miles (the extra distance was part of warm-up/cool down)
Tuesday: Sick/Rest
Wednesday: Sick/Rest
Thursday: Run, 4.69 miles (again, warm-up/cool down is the extra distance)
Friday: Run, speed work (3.03 miles)
Saturday: Sick/Crap Weather/Rest
Sunday: Sick/Crap Weather/Rest

I hope that week 8 goes better than week 7 and that it won't impact my performance in December.

How do you deal with getting sick during training?

Temporary Weight Loss?

Tweet

Last Wednesday I started feeling kind of icky.  It started with a pain in my neck and I knew I needed to crack my neck but it hurt to turn my head.  Then the pain worsened to be an all inclusive headache which is when I took some Tylenol PM and headed to bed.  By Thursday morning I was miserable.  I was sick to my stomach and alternated between sweating bullets and being so cold I thought maybe I'd become a penguin.  (For my bestie Krissy - it's too cold for a penguin to be walkin' around outside - sorry but I couldn't resist)  Throw in a little diarrhea and you've got quite the virus.  This continued on through Saturday when my fever spiked at 102.4 degrees.  Not only was I miserable but now I was getting worried because I normally don't run more than 100 or 101 when I'm sick and the last time I'd had a fever that high was when my appendix ruptured.  Luckily, my appendix has already been removed so at least I didn't have to worry about that!  :)

I spent the days sleeping.  Almost all day.  I didn't have much of an appetite and when I did eat I just ended up with more nausea and diarrhea.  So I started on the BRAT diet.  I'd never been on this diet as a kid but heard that it was supposed to work wonders for stopping diarrhea.  If you're not familiar the BRAT diet is made up of Bananas, Rice, Applesauce and Toast.  Not tubular cased meats as my husband first thought.  I'm fine with the RAT of the diet but bananas for every meal got old.  Fast.  Let me say that it does seem to help but after 3 days of eating the exact same thing I'd be happy to not have that combination of foods for ... oh... I don't know... ever.

I weighed in at my meeting today and found out I'd lost 7.4 pounds in a week.  Maybe the BRAT diet isn't so bad?  Then thinking about having bananas, rice, applesauce and toast for dinner?  Nah... I'll happily go back to eating regular healthy food.