How to Mess Up a Perfectly Good Saturday Run (and ache for days afterward)

After several years as a runner, I should know that my performance on a run depends as much on my mental state as my physical state.  I should know this.  I never seem to really remember it, though.

I do my long runs on Saturday.  I wake up early.  I head out no between 6:30 and 7, so that I am finished no later than 9.  Amy respects my need to run, but I don’t want to make the whole family’s Saturday revolve around my running schedule.

I started feeling a sneaking dread about last Saturday’s run on Friday night.  I felt tired.  I didn’t want to blog.  I didn’t want to do anything.  In fact, I laid about on the couch from the time Janie went to bed until I went to bed playing the free version of Scrabble on my phone.  That’s right… I don’t care enough to buy the actual app, yet I wasted an entire night messing around with my online Scrabble opponents.

Maybe dread is too strong a word.  It was really more like apathy.  I didn’t want to do a long run.  I hadn’t run more than 5 miles a pop for more than two weeks, and I felt ambivalent at best about putting forth the amount of energy a 13.1 mile run takes.  So, I kept hitting snooze on my alarm.  Even though I knew I needed to get up and eat, so I could get out of the house on time.  Even though I could smell the brewed coffee waiting for me in the kitchen.  Snooze.

All this is a long lead in to say that, while I made decent time on my Saturday run, it was painful.  In fact, I decided to cut my run down to a 10 miler, because my right calf began cramping around mile 8 and my left quad tightened a bit more with each mile.  And my knees felt every connection with the pavement.  I am not fan of stopping short of my mileage goal on a run, but I also know running shouldn’t hurt.  Especially not in a training run.  A stubbornness inflicted injury also would not get much sympathy from Amy.

Why all the aches and pains?  Remember that apathy/dread I mentioned?  It manifested itself in tension in all my muscles, an obsession with my pacing, and a bizarre (and misguided) need to push off with my calves to gain speed.  My head just wasn’t where it needed to be, and my body responded by completely freaking out.

I am actually looking forward to this Saturday’s run.  My calves finally feel normal again (I could barely walk for two dang days), and I am excited to see what I can do out there.  And this is a much better way to approach a run.

13.1 miles.  Bring it.

Mercy Tastes Like Bubble Gum

Strep throat.  Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a kid like the threat of strep throat.

Now I remember why.

On Thursday morning, I woke up feeling off–my head felt foggy, my muscles ached.  At 6 a.m., I asked Amy to get up with Jane so I could sleep for a bit longer to try to ward of the impending sickness.  Turns out, sleep only delayed the inevitable.  By 1 p.m., when Amy mercifully came home from work, I knew that I was really sick.  My fever already reached 100.3.  From there, even on a steady dose of Tylenol, it climbed to 103.1 before it finally broke at 10 p.m.

Fevers, chills, hot flashes, and throbbing achiness… and an almost 1 year old to take care of.  Those factors can only equate to agony.  I do not remember ever being in that much seemingly inescapable pain.  And it all seemed so hopeless.  Jane wanted me to play.  Moving around hurt.  She still need to be fed, and held, and loved.  And I just wanted to cry.  Awful.

When people used to tell me how much my life would change after I had Jane, I thought they were idiots. Of course my life would change.  I understood the ways in which it would change.  Even after Jane was born, I felt like I had adequately prepared myself for what it meant to completely care for another human being.  But OH MY LORD… people forgot to mention that kids don’t go away when you get sick.  Jane wouldn’t issue a time out.  I could hear her chanting “No mercy” as I lay moaning on the floor next to her tunnel, which she had already crawled through 101 times.  It was hell.

At this point in the chaos, Amy was stricken down with the plague, too.  That’s right.  Both parent figures down for the count by Thursday evening.

Oh, but wait… at this point, my throat didn’t even hurt!  Nope, not until Friday morning did I wake up feeling much better… except for the thousands of tiny knives sliding down my throat when I swallowed.  But 3 p.m. I was at a walk-in clinic begging for mercy.

Mercy came in a pediatric dose of bubble gum flavored amoxicillin to treat strep (although no one is really sure I have strep at all… it is just an educated guess).

I am not exaggerating when I say that hell is strep throat with an almost 1 year old.  Absolute torment.  But it is over; we are going to be okay.

Now, if I can just get Jane to stop chanting “no mercy,” everything will be back to normal around here.