Overall, I’m pleased with the week’s numbers:

• Monday: 2 miles on the Treadmill, 16.75 miles on the FitDesk
• Tuesday: 5.1 mile run
• Wednesday: rest
• Thursday: 8.29 mile run, 12.13 miles on the FitDesk
• Friday: 20.41 miles on the FitDesk
• Saturday: 3.2 mile run
• Sunday: Rest

I could use more strength training and yoga in my life. Definitely yoga… but it’s so hard to fit it in!

I did my long run during the week, I think that’s going to be my approach for this whole training cycle. Yes, it means I have to makeup work time in the evenings, but it works pretty well.

In the past, I’ve always had a tough time fueling long runs. That’s really kept me from reaching my full potential, I’m sure of it. Some of the fueling trouble is a mental block due to ED issues. Trying to think about how many calories I’m consuming and how to burn them off is exhausting. It’s also a messed up approach to distance training. But another part of it is the fact that I have a finicky digestive system, something that got worse postpartum.

On Thursday’s run I tried Powerbar Gel Blasts during the run. I found them annoying to chew up while running. And when I hit mile 7.6, my stomach started cramping up. It hurt so bad and I couldn’t get home fast enough. Although, the faster I tried to make myself go the worse the pain got. And here’s where I’m going to be gross… but I imagine plenty of other runners have had issues so I may as well throw it out there. I LITERALLY just about crapped my pants when I was one house away from mine. (Which would have been a fairly decent place to have that happen if it was going to occur, right?) So I rushed in to the house and I felt sick for a couple days after. It tore my insides up.

Last week I experimented with Island Boost and it was awesome. So easy to get down (especially compared to traditional gels) and I felt perfectly fine after taking it. I really feel the need to experiment with that product more.

I think I mentioned it in my post on Island Boost, but the creator was diagnosed with Celiac disease after she started running. Apparently running caused her body to process the gluten faster and caused more problems. I am not saying that I have Celiac disease or that I’m gluten intolerant. In fact, I don’t want that to be true… gluten is in good things! But I do think there must be some kind of problem in my diet and running causes it to affect me more quickly.

I downloaded the app Food Allergy Detective and will try to track when I eat potential allergenic items and when I have symptoms. My husband told me to go see the doctor. I told him, “But she’ll probably just send me to a gastroenterologist!” He looked at me and said matter-of-factly, “Then you go to a gastroenterologist.” He’s right, it isn’t as traumatic as I make it out in my head. But I hate doctors, I either go and have a problem worse than I thought or I go and they treat me like I’m whining about nothing at all.

I have had troubles with getting sick my whole life. When I removed milk from my diet when I was 11 or 12ish, that made a big difference. I wasn’t as sick every single day, but still have had more than my fair share of problems. When I started training for a marathon in 2007, that was the first time that I have experienced the extreme problems that I’ve started to have. At first it came on when I did runs that were 15 miles or longer. But now it seems to hit me on shorter and shorter runs. It’s terrible when it comes on before you could have even finished a 5K.

In other, completely unrelated news… on Sunday I took an hour for myself (while Alex screamed for my hubby and refused to nap) and did this to my hair.

I mentioned that I’ve always wanted to do something like this to my hair… well, I did it! I used a henna hair dye that washes out in 2-4 weeks. I kind of love it!