antsy in my pantsies

This morning it was chilly (20 F) and I was really slow getting out of the house. Five miles today… just below the max of my current weekday runs. I slept well last night, but had a difficult time getting motivated to do this run. Once I got out on the road and my brain started waking up, I started tossing around thoughts about my day. [Side note: another thing I love about running is the time it affords you to think and plan and contemplate]

Thursdays are mostly work-days for me (no classes to attend, just some TA-ing for a couple hours), and I started getting excited about attacking the mountain of work that has piled up on me this week. I had a great little plan laid out and I think I got a little too excited about getting started. Before I knew it, I was halfway done with my run (important note: the first half of the run today was downhill… the second half, uphill) and had expended far too much energy.

Long story short… by the time I got back up to where I had started, I was gasping like a goldfish in Death Valley. I guess even though you can let your mind float a little bit, you still have to pay attention to your pace if you want a practical run. Oh well, another lesson learned.

today’s lesson

One of the many things I love about running a lot is that you really get to know your body. If you’re willing to pay attention, you can really learn what each tick, tock, twitch, and pop inside your body means/is coming from/is trying to tell you.

Today, my body told me that I should never again complete the following sequence of steps:

1) eat breakfast at 6:30 am

2) eat a grapefruit-sized asian pear at 12:00 pm

3) run 6 miles at 1:00 pm

The result of my doing this was the most absurd, Pepto-Bismol commercial-worthy upset stomach I’ve experienced in recent memory.

A bowl of rice later, I’m starting to feel normal again. Thank goodness.