This blog is my first. I am not an amazing writer and I am not looking to tell an incredible story. Rather, I would like to chronicle my attempts to train for a marathon, be a good mother to my 3 year old, earn my Master's degree and be a good wife all at the same time. And I am old.
I'm not ancient, don't get me wrong. BUT my body feels old! I ran a half marathon and later a full marathon in 2005 - I was 28 - and it felt great. Best moments of my life! I still have dreams about those moments - crossing the finish line, really great training runs, eating healthy, feeling healthy. What I wouldn't give to have that back! Now, only 6 years later - bring on the health problems! Everything has gone wrong! I'll start at the beginning of this year...
It didn't take a keen eye to discover that not exercising, stress, and eating whatever I wanted had taken its toll on my body. Early January I realized that not only did I feel like crap, but after seeing some pictures taken over Christmas at my mom's house, I looked like crap too! I am not an incredibly vain woman, but I do like to keep myself in shape because I know that if my body looks bad on the outside, the inside isn't doing much better. And I always revert back to the feelings I had in 2005 when I was the most fit I had ever been in my life. I knew that getting back to that place just required making a series of good decisions. Choices that I face every day. A bit of stubbornness. A bit of motivation to look good. A lot of motivation to feel good. That was it, and I would do it. Step number one: Sign up for a race that I could not finish in a million years if I didn't train correctly. So... bring on the Bolder Boulder. A 10k (to us Americans, that translates to 6.2 miles) around the streets of Boulder, CO on May 31. I had plenty of time to train, so I decided to lose some weight first in order to run a bit faster and make life easier in general.
I lost weight - about 10 pounds, then hit the trails. I started slow, I had a plan, I decided not to run through pain like I had done in the past, I wouldn't violate the 10% rule - it sounded like I knew what I was doing. It felt like it, too for a couple of weeks! Now, enter stage left, exercise induced asthma. Well, I wasn't completely caught off-guard. It had happened before... I just had to start taking my meds and using my inhaler. No big deal. Next, the joint problems. After doing a bit of research I decided to add strength training to my exercise regime. So I hate weight training and this really sucked, but if it had to be done to keep me healthy, that was fine. I think this was the point that I let my ambition take over my rational thinking and I signed up for a half marathon in July and a full marathon in October. I really love this stuff, you have to understand. Races are so much fun - I don't go to win, I go to do it, to say that I did it, to motivate me to do more, and to finish! I love this shit. Can't get enough of it.
So here I am, feeling pretty good, running regularly, getting my stuff done (although I will admit that I am about 10x more motivated to go out for a run than read scientific papers for my thesis - this could be a problem down the road, lol, but not yet), and the runner's trots have begun. I started to really ramp up my miles around this time, so I imagine all of the repetitive pounding is making my IBS symptoms come back (I have had these issues since my pregnancy - but not serious, just annoying). Ok, I can deal. Just have to take a few extra steps before going out for that run (drink some coffee and take a bathroom break first). It worked for a few weeks, until my 8-miler.
It was a beautiful day. I had run 6 miles the day before. I felt fantastic. I had lots of energy. My plan was to cross train that day - I don't usually do longer runs 2 days in a row - but I went with my gut and did it. 8 miles. 9:30 pace - pretty good for a long run for me. And then... totally bowled over by what came next. I spent the next 6 hours in the bathroom, and saw something very alarming... (WARNING: Graphic-ness is coming up)... blood. Lots of it.
I did next what anyone would do in this situation - I Googled. And I was even more surprised by what I found. This is somewhat, dare I say, "normal." Normal for mid-thirties white women it seemed. This was not okay with me. And, it looks like this is not treatable - hundreds of people on threads everywhere were describing the same exact thing that happened to them, followed by a dr appt, a colonoscopy (mine is next week), followed by negative or inconclusive results, followed by a doctor visit where it was told to them "sorry, but there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with you and I don't have a treatment for your symptoms." One lady even said that her "cure" was a pair of biking shorts that she would run in so that if she didn't make it in time, nothing ran down her leg. SERIOUSLY??? Again, THIS IS NOT OKAY with me!!!
I had my doctor visit 2 days ago and an appointment was made for tomorrow, Monday April 4th, to consult with a gastroenterologist and schedule the colonoscopy.
What seems really ironic about all of this, is that if I just quit running, if I just give up on exercising entirely and blow the races, I will probably be fine. No asthma, no chafing, no joint issues, no weight training, no long days, fewer upper respiratory infections (of which I have had 2 since I began running this year). Everything wrong with me would probably just go away. But the irony is that I feel better than I have in at least 1 year, since I sort of fell off the running bandwagon. So I continue. Granted, I have been sticking with the treadmill lately to stay close to a bathroom - nothing worse than being in a busy park when the sh*t goes down (lol, no pun intended).
So here begins my story of a 32 year old woman up against some odds. Hey, I'm not saying my life isn't awesome or that I am not happy. I am quite thankful for what I have. However, I will not deny that I should just quit running and find something else and to that I say, "no way!" Not gonna do it. I am determined to work around this and prove to myself that it can be done in the face of a lot of negativity.
