and then a week later...

i went for another run.

i did a moderate amount of exercise last week, nothing big but not too shabby, tired myself out a few times -- but no running. the night after the marathon, my legs ached enough to bother me in my sleep, and the day after i was obviously not a creature fit for stairwells, but by tuesday i was just 'pretty sore', and so on. my right knee has stayed cranky, and i've iced it a few times, and i laid fairly low. it felt pretty good! ... i have started being moderately less hungry too, which is kind of a relief; i thought i might just be hungry forever.

anyway: this morning, i got up and went for a run.

and do you know what? it really sucked.

... jesus crap, it was unpleasant! i ran for 30 minutes, and i ran about 9 minute miles, and i felt like DEATH. nevermind my right knee, which felt iffy in the first 3 or 4 minutes but warmed up quite nicely -- meanwhile, though, my lungs were angry, my arms were crampy, my hamstrings and calves took turns pretending they were broken, my stomach churned. i wanted to puke, pass out, stop running, fall over, and generally go back to bed.

guys, um, i ran 26.2 miles last weekend. i feel like this should not have been a big deal.
... so what happened? hmmph, well.

the stomach thing was due to predictable oatmeal malfunction. where is my brain on this one? i CANNOT EAT OATMEAL BEFORE MORNING RUNS. you see, i say it in all caps like maybe i'll hear it next time, from across the room in the kitchen. honestly, i bet i thought (in my pre-coffee stupor) that it was safe because i was going to the post office between eating and running. yeah, that twelve minute errand fooled no one, least of all my gut, which felt like it was punching me in the rib cage with those oats as soon as i went faster than a jog. please, PLEASE can i remember this next time.

apart from that, i'm not too sure on what the deal was. maybe i'm still in marathon recovery, although really that doesn't feel the case. i went to zuuuuuuuumba last night (shut up, it's a dance party, i need me some dance party sometimes, so i add a lot of extra uuuuuuuuuus for good measure), and i pushed myself to jump around a lot, and i never felt any of that heavylegs-stopjumping-dammitwoman feeling, when you're really tired from previous exertion or not enough sleep. i felt strong! and this morning i felt DOOM.

meh. you know, sometimes you just have a bad run. it's cool. weirdly, it made me feel kind of pumped to sign up for a race; introspection has actually not yet revealed to me what that's about. well: it made me feel kind of pumped to go run again and have it not suck as much, for starters.

so i signed up for an early december 5k. for participating in this race, i am promised a 'Scrooge Santa knit hat', which doesn't make sense in a variety of ways -- for starters Scrooge hats and Santa hats are mutually exclusive, but then it sounds like they actually mean a toque, which is in fact a third kind of hat... but they can mess up the hats all they want because the race starts at 10am! luxury! pinnacle of civilization! true christmas miracle! i will leave the house after sunrise! ... so, yeah, i'm looking forward to it.

i guess this means i will try doing some speedwork in the next month and a bit. and despite today's atrocity of a short tempo run, that also sounds fun. ... my usual non-marathon-training run schedule is 2 times a week, sometimes 3, so i will make sure i do at least 2 runs a week, plus 4 other days of exercise (it's supposed to be something like 2X cardio, 2X strength, and 3X core, plus stretching all the time.) and also i will continue to try not to eat *all* the things, which is going alright in the last several days.

this also means i'll keep blogging here, sometimes? i think i'll keep it up for two kinds of posts:

1. when i want to write a blog post on my talking to friends blog, but then i realize it's all about running and only the people who would read here would conceivably care, and

2. race reports, of whatever sort. before marathon training began, i was vaguely in the habit of running about 10 races a year: a few halfs and the rest 5 or 10ks in the darker months, and some trail stuff over the summer. november is i think going to be race free, but after that i'll try to get back into that cycle.

and you can continue to read or not read, and that's cool. i think i'm fairly happy talking here into the mostly-void, and just knowing that the writing will take some knots of emotion and info in my brain and knead them out into semi-orderly thoughts on the screen is good enough reason to keep talking. and to keep running. good times, folks. till soon!