DISTRESS!

Warning: This post may contain TMI. Read at your own discretion. We triathletes are chronic over-sharers in my experience, so I'm not really worried that you won't read on.

Something new happened to me this week. I have frequently heard or read about people struggling in or dropping out of races with "GI distress", but I never really understood exactly what kind of distress they had run into or how it had happened. It had never happened to me, and I guess I am always relatively smart about how/when I eat in relationship to my workouts. Well I should say "have always been relatively smart". And after the experience I had the other evening, I plan to be very smart in the future. On Wednesday I came home and needed to go for my second workout, which was a run. It was very very hot outside and the AC at my work hasn't really been working well recently, so I wasn't looking forward to the heat. This factor, combined with the fact that the two people currently living in my house (who depend on me for dinner preparation) were whining about being hungry, influenced my decision to push back my run to later in the evening and start on dinner. I cooked my chicken with tomatoes and capers (see recipe from a few months ago) and it was delicious. So I ate it.

Now, I knew this was a bad idea. I just thought that I could wait a little while before I ran and I would be fine. Oh how naive I was. I started my run (in the still oppressive heat, I might add) feeling alright and not over-full. I got through my warm up and about half of my interval training when...BOOM BANG YUCK GAG!!! My stomach was suddenly angrier at me than I can remember it being in a very long time. I thought I would puke. Then I thought maybe I needed to run home to use the bathroom. Then I simply couldn't run any longer. I was literally bent over in pain. Once I could get vertical again, I had to power-walk the rest of the way home and lock myself in the bathroom when I finally got there.

Never again I tell you. Next time I will make the dinner, put my portion on the fridge, have a banana, and run. Chicken=post run meal. NOT pre-run. Duh Jo.

Also, it is 105 today with humidity off the charts. Heat? Fine. Humidity like this? Insane. Today I am supposed to run, but I honestly haven't decided how I will accomplish this...

If I run at 5 am tomorrow, it will be 80 degrees. That is the LOW for the entire evening. Dang.