A story for Friday: Why Running and I are still working on our relationship

“I didn’t think about all the training,” I grumbled to my boss yesterday afternoon as I prepared to leave the office for an afternoon run as part of my training schedule for the Country Music Half Marathon on April 28.

“I forgot about how it feels to do all the training,” I said. “I just remembered how it feels when you finish the half!”

And that’s the truth, friends. There’s a whole lot of training and doing stuff you don’t want to do when you’re training for a distance race because if you don’t, the day of the race will be terrible. And nobody wants to be that person who’s walking in every picture, or worse yet, throwing up. . .

But I digress. This week, dear ones, hasn’t been the best running week of my life—mostly because I have little to no common sense. Here’s why:

On Monday, I had to go to the dermatologist and they had to take a few vials of blood for some blood tests. I take a medication that requires testing of your potassium and liver function each month. And even though I’d had about 48 ounces of water by that point in the day, the nurses had trouble getting my blood, finally resorting to taking it from my hand. After I left the office—with a bandage on my hand and in my arm—what did I do? I headed straight for the gym, hopped on a treadmill, and started running my scheduled 3 miles.

About halfway through when I realized I wasn’t feeling quite right and knew the run wasn’t going well and that I was running REALLY slow compared to my usual pace, I thought, You know, after having blood taken, you probably shouldn’t be doing this.

The sheen of sweat on my face and neck and the glances the guy on the treadmill next to me kept giving me only confirmed my suspicions that I was probably pale and breathing weirdly. But I finished—it was a training run and the distance MUST be covered! And then I went home and crashed.

Lesson learned: Don’t run immediately after having the doctor draw your blood for testing. Even if it’s just a little bit.

Then, yesterday, I ran outside. So far, during my official training, I’ve only done two runs outside. So even though winter seem to have finally arrived in Tennessee and there was a chilly wind blowing, I was dedicated to finishing my four miles outside. And it really was fine for awhile. Then, the constant wind blowing on my right ear made me have a slight ear ache. And my hands were freezing. And I’d started running with my sunglasses on and now I no longer needed them and they weren’t the sunglasses I like to wear while running. . . .

Let’s just say that the last mile simply involved finishing (I did run all the way up the hill on McMurray, folks! no walking there!) and thinking about getting home where I could take a hot shower to warm up. All of which happened, and I ran the distance faster than I had the week before.

But this morning, when I woke up, I realized another thing I’d forgotten about my winter training last year: windburn. I have crazy chapped cheeks, red and jolly like Santa’s.

Sigh.

Lesson learned: Coat your face in moisturizer (or maybe just Vaseline) before and after cold winter runs.

#running #training #cold #winterruns #treadmill