Category: Stomach

Week 22- June?!?

Upcoming Races:

Rock N Roll San Diego 13.1-June 4

Wait, it’s June? And race week? Someone really needs to slow the clock down. Or I’ll take a Time Turner, wouldn’t it be nice if those were real? 😛

I suffered from vacation brain and just burn out this week. Everything seemed so much harder than it should have been. Seriously, I had troubles counting. That’s not a good thing in my line of work. I had to count things multiple times. While I love 4 day work weeks, there is still 5 days worth of work to fit into those 4 days. Years ago I had a coworker tell me she hated 3 day weekends because she spent all of Monday stressing about the increased workload on Tuesday. I won’t complain about 3 days off but I am beginning to see her point.

I mentioned in my last post that I may have ordered myself a new Garmin. It’s here!! It’s so pretty, now I am just trying to figure out the bells and whistles.

Monday- 2.74 miles Ugly. I decide to try the Roga’s again and once again it was a bad idea. I eventually gave up attempting to run and just walked it back to my house. It felt a waste of the extra time off work. I did take the dog out for a short walk later but it was super short and slow.

Tuesday- Rest With work typically being crazy busy and now being down a person ( my coworker had the baby!) I didn’t even try to run. I thought about riding the bike when I got home but thinking is as far as it got.

Wednesday- Rest Oh hey, I have a race in 4 days. I started to do the math and realized that if ran today and Thursday like planned, I would have more miles than previous weeks. That didn’t seem like the best idea. Granted my miles have been so low that a taper seems silly but it still didn’t seem smart to suddenly increase them on race week. Then my brother decided to take the family to dinner so I figured it all worked out, right?

Thursday- 3.22 miles Ok dinner was a bad idea, it made me sick. At first I thought it was just my stomach being an asshat but I later found out that my dad was kind of sick too and we ate the same thing. There was a point I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to run at all. Yet, I changed and headed for home town. Once I got there I realized it was 85 degrees and I had somehow forgotten a water bottle. Lovely. Then somehow this run kicked ass. I decided to keep it shorter and slower than planned due to lack of hydration and heat and managed to stick to one of those. 😛 I ended up running my fastest 5K in the last 6 months. Still slow as I made sure to take walk breaks every 2 minutes but my legs felt great! Where did that come from?!

Friday- Rest Total vacation brain, stress ball. I was trying to get everything done so no one had to worry about anything while I was gone and I was stressing out. I love vacations but the type A in me hates not being there.

Saturday- Road trip!! Oh good lord, it took 7 hours to get to San Diego. Traffic, you suck. Once we were finally there we headed straight for the Convention Center and the Expo. Bib pickup and shirt pick up was a cinch then it was into the crowd. I figured we were so late most people would have already picked up their stuff…nope! People everywhere! I was able to meet up with Mai of Once Upon A Run and Chelsea of The Dancing Runner, which was awesome! Then it was of to Seaport Village for a Bibrave Pro meetup with Mai and Emily of azSunGoddess.

Finally we checked into our hotel- literally across the street from the finish line festival- before heading out for some food. I tried to go sleep early as I knew I had a really early wake up call but I was realizing that you really could eat too much pizza. Food and I did not get along this week. 😭

Sunday- Rock n Roll San Diego 13.1 Recap to come. But for the first time, I took a race shuttle to the start. Look at me being all runner like. 😛

19.2 miles for the week. I meant to ride the bike but it just never happened. I wasn’t too busy I just didn’t make it a priority. Next week.

Speaking of next week, I have the week off!! Woo hoo! I have so many things I need and should get done but I also kind of want to spend a day or 2 doing nothing. Which one will win?

How was your week?

Do anything fun this weekend?

What do you do on Stay-cations?

Rambling On 9

Happy Friday ~~Eve!~~

Nope, it’s Friday now. 😛

I am so looking forward to a 3 day weekend. I have so many things I need to do. My car has reached a ridiculous level of dirty again. And I probably should get in a long run. Seems like a smart thing to do with a race next week.

So I bought a new sports bra. Realized it was past time to replace some of mine but the store had very few in my size. Guess it’s a popular size? The only color they had was white, kind of boring but whatever. Then I wore it. Makes no sense but I felt weird having my straps show. Purple, coral or flowers and I have no problem but something about the white made me want to cover it up! That doesn’t even make sense!

My stomach has been an asshat of a different level this week. I was having a pretty good month- still sick everyday but having a good month- but this week the right side has been hurting abnormally. Not cool. I’m pretty good at ignoring pain and it’s nothing too severe but it’s not a normal spot. Boo.

I’m debating seeing a movie this weekend. I’m on the fence about the new Pirates movie and can’t decide if it’s worth the expense. Part of me also wants to go car shopping. nothing wrong with my car, I’ve just had it for 3 years. That sounds bad I know but this is car number 10… no 9. Crap, I’ve lost count.

Random- Did you know that Luffa’s are a vegetable? I had no idea. I feel like I know nothing now. So you shower with a vegetable? Huh?

What are your plans this weekend?

Leaded or Unleaded

And the long run headaches are back.

I drink plenty of water so it’s not a lack of hydration. Granted I am prone to headaches and migraines so there is that. I am still loving the Ultima for shorter runs but I am wondering if my issue with longer runs is a lack of calories. I still fuel horribly…as in I don’t. I just can’t eat on my longer runs. I buy gels and gu’s and chews and never eat them. I carry them with me but they just end looking very beat up and expired. So maybe my water needs to gain some weight?

With that in mind, it was time to experiment. So I hit up The Feed.

#1 Gen Ucan Orange- I heard great things and I really liked their protein powder so I was hopeful. Out of the package, it mixed chalkier than I had expected. It kind of seemed like it didn’t dissolve. It didn’t taste powdery it just looked like that. It actually had very little taste. Very bland. Taste aside, I had a surprisingly great 8 mile run. I ran a hill I have never run in its entirety before. I even posted about it on Instagram. My mother made fun of me. My post run headache was very muted.

#2- Glukos Orange- Mixed and dissolved well and was very orange in color. It also tasted very yummy. That said, I slammed into a wall at mile 6 of a 9 mile run. I felt ok leading up to that point and then things went very south. It was the same route as before and at first I thought to blame it on the French toast that I had for breakfast but again that was the same as before too. And I had a headache.

#3 Tailwind Raspberry Buzz- Caffeine!!!! I was heading out for what I thought I was going to be a shortened long run because I wasn’t feeling it so I admit I only mixed 1/2 the pouch. It blended well but oh man, it tasted like medicine. I wasn’t a huge fan of the taste but a I went from not wanting to run at all to bartering with myself to just run 4 to actually running a solid 8 miler that day. Hmmmm. I do like that it has caffeine in it. I feel like my asthma cranky lungs appreciate it sometimes. I had a medium headache.

I am still cycling through these options. I bought multiples so I could try each one on multiple runs in hopes of finding the golden ticket. But a new contender has entered the ring too.

Thanks to Bibrave, I get to try the Beachbody Performance line. I’ve heard great things about their Hydrate product so yay! One of these has to solve the long run headaches, right?

How do you hydrate?

Fuel?

Week 5- Training Begins??

Training for:

Livermore 13.1 -March 26
Destination Races Santa Barbara 13.1- May 13

Or does it? I was looking forward to putting my money where my mouth is as it were and hitting the marks during week 1 of training. Or at least trying to. I knew the miles were going to be hard and I knew I had a busy week but I was looking forward to the challenge.

Monday- 3.1 miles Baby tempo! You can read all about that enlightening run here. I’m still debating where to run my tempo miles. I’ll figure something out.

Tuesday- Planned rest day My legs were a little tight after the attempt at speed the previous day. I wore compression socks under my slacks most of the day and made sure to foam roll.

And here’s when things went south-

Wednesday- ~~Intervals~~– rest I woke up with a headache and stomach pain. I held fast that I was going to run after work. Except that I didn’t make it through the day at work. It got to the point that I couldn’t even stand up straight my stomach hurt so bad. Joy.

Thursday/ Friday- Rest What I didn’t mention was that starting Tuesday night I woke up every night sweating ridiculously. TMI? Sorry. Maybe I was fighting something? My brother had been sick, my boss missed a day being sick. Whatever it was, my migraine wouldn’t quit and I felt weird. I also had a doctor’s appointment where he ordered a series of fun tests. Yay.

Saturday- Planned rest. We were going out of town for my grandmother’s memorial. I knew I wasn’t running that day. It was a sad, nostalgic, interesting morning and a long day.

Sunday- 8 miles. I didn’t want to run. I still wasn’t feeling great but I also wondered how much of that was real and how much was just lingering inertia of the week. I slept in in the morning and headed out a little before 3. Yes, I was running during the Super Bowl. 😛 I was bartering with myself in miles 1 and 2, the week was already a wash so I could call it at 4 right? I even slowed down in mile 3 which has a downhill and is usually a little faster. Grrr. But I kept running and something changed around mile 3.5. I just kept going, mile 4, across the bridge- where I pulled a sub 10 mile. This is only interesting because I average around 11:30ish until I hit the bridge and bring the pace down over the next .3 mile. I swear I wasn’t sprinting. Mile 5- still going and feeling pretty good. Mile 6 and I ran an entire hill that I have never run all of before. I celebrated on IG and my mother laughed at me. Ok, so the hill less than 1/2 mile and only gained 92 feet but let me have my tiny victory!!! Onto mile 7 and mile 8 and I still felt good! Woo hoo!! I have no idea what happened but I’ll take it!

11.1 miles for the week. 1 half completed workout, 1 fully completed workout. 1 missed run and 2 missed cross trainings. I’m still on the long run high though so yay! But I am thankful that this is a longer training plan now. If it was the standard 12 weeks, I may be a little nervous but the longer plan is keeping me a little calmer. It may be a false sense of security but only time will tell.

How was your week?

Did you watch the Super Bowl? Puppy Bowl?

February Recap- Realizations

Well, that didn’t go according to plan.

Miles– 59.8 run
29 Miles Stationary bike

Races– Surf City 13.1- 2:28:24

Originally I was planning to ramp up training for SLO post Surf City. Speed work was going to make its first appearance this year and I was going to force myself to be a grown up and go run on the treadmill. But, my lungs had other plans. With 5 rest days leading up to Surf City and the 6 days following it, I missed out on a lot of running time. And bike time, somehow I kind of forgot about the bike. I see it on a daily basis but I only rode it 3 times. Umm, oops?

So back to those pesky lungs. I closed out February with a follow up at my doctor. My chest x-ray came back clear. So the current theory is to blame El Nino. No, seriously. The El Nino weather systems have wreaked havoc on those with seasonal allergies. So we haven’t yet seen the buckets of rain that were promised but hay fever and other assorted issues are in overdrive for everyone. So, I have a shiny new rescue inhaler and still have to use a heavy duty, daily inhaler twice a day. My thyroid is also messed up, so I have a new medication there as well. Seriously, I am beginning to think I need one of those AM/PM pill containers just to keep it all straight. Stupid stomach, whiny lungs and a lazy thyroid? Grrr.

I also had some realizations in February. I don’t remember exactly when I started running but my first race was in September of 2010. So 5+ years of running and 16 half marathons later and I only just now realized that I suck at long runs. For once I am not referring to the pace or the number of walk breaks, I mean doing the runs themselves. If you had asked me I would have sworn up and down that I did a few 10 milers each training cycle and some 11 milers. Ha!! Remember in January when I ran what I said was my slowest 10 miler ever? Something about that statistic on Smash Run made me do some research. It claimed that it was my slowest 10 miler coming in at #13. 13? That didn’t seem right. So after Sunday’s more successful 10 miler I looked into my stats on the Garmin. Then Nike+.

Holy crap, in 5 years of running I’ve only run 15 10 milers? 2 11 milers and 2 12 mile runs. And I call myself a runner? A few years ago I know I used to split my long runs up but I really doubt they would make those numbers look any better. Well, that was a wake up call. I didn’t think I was that bad of a Slacker. #facepalm Do people still do that?

So, I am chalking February up as a learning experience. Or the clearing of the fog of denial I was living in. Moving into March I would like to work on making the run a consistent occurrence. Which is necessary as I have a 16 mile run on the training plan for the beginning of April. I conveniently ignored that box on the plan during last years SLO race prep. March also brings the start of daylight savings. Which means the lake path is back in play and speed work may actually happen on a somewhat consistent basis. We’ll see how the lungs hold up. Fingers crossed!

How was your February? Any plans for March?

Am I just a huge Slacker?

Ever faced a sad running realization?