Spring: Everywhere But The Legs

It might be spring outside everywhere, but there is no spring in my legs, they are as stale as an old Peep.

Each week since I got back from Delano, I have made plans to run a certain number of miles and have ended up falling short, except for last week when I planned to do only 30 and that is exactly what I did.

I got out today and ran 11 after yesterday's 15. Yesterday morning I got excited, it was my work hangover day but I still felt pretty decent on my morning pre-nap run. My legs actually had a little energy in them. I was so pumped I texted Wheaties Boy to tell him. Not so fast. In my afternoon run, they were dead meat again.

This morning I took the girls running, it was just barely spitting raindrops. I finished out 6 miles on my own and then did some errands before meeting my friend Cat for an easy 5 mile lunchtime run. It rained pretty hard right before we started running, and then went back to light rain. It was good to catch up with her, we do our own types of races and rarely get to run together these days. We are planning an easy trail run later this week.

I must be feeling courageous to plan a trail run, since I haven't been on trails more than twice all winter and certainly haven't done anything resembling a hill. I'm thinking someone gave me a frontal lobotomy during the night and I wasn't aware of it. If a lobotomy would stop my hot flashes I probably would agree to it.

My new name could be "The Flasher". I have been constantly hot and cold all night, waking up in a sweat, and during the day, same thing. I'll be standing there at work and all of a sudden I am pouring sweat inside my scrubs. Fortunately they dry fast!

If I could do something about it, I would. There isn't much I feel comfortable doing. I don't need to take any more pharmaceutical products...and most of the herbal remedies out there are full of dangers to your liver function and who knows what else they do to your brain and kidneys and other organs.

I won't do hormones due to my sister's breast cancer history, and I'd rather have hot flashes than cancer, but this really is annoying. It's the lack of sleep that is hardest. If it didn't interrupt my sleep a gazillion times a night, I could be okay with it.

I've tried not drinking alcohol, and that doesn't help. Avoiding spicy foods doesn't help. Afternoon naps help, only because they help me make up for the sleep I lost during the night, they don't solve the thermoregulation issue. Everyone says that eventually it gets better, but for the several years while I have to endure this "personal summer" as my coworker Connie calls it, I'm going to be a B.I.T.C.H!

On the positive side, the anxiety attacks I was having a month or so ago seem to have left me alone lately. I don't know why that is, nothing has changed. But I'll take it.





Along the way on my run with the girls this morning, someone had lost a pack of cigarettes out in the street. I always like to think that came from someone who decided to quit smoking and threw their last pack of cigarettes out the window.




Another sign of spring: pesticide warning flags on front yards. Which reminds me, this summer we will be under watering restrictions in Fort Collins due to the drought, something that should have been implemented years ago, but hasn't been until now. It's kind of silly to expect to keep your lawn green, and I always hate seeing that people have applied pesticides to their yards, but at least the warning flags help me keep the girls away.


Xeriscaping would be a better way to go. We plan to slowly convert our yard to xeriscape over the next few years. Except I refuse to put in gravel like we had in Arizona. I hated those pink rocks all over the yard. I prefer something like wood chips, boulders, and wildflowers.

I am so looking forward to taking a break after Ohio. This was not a good idea, the way I stretched out this season to last so long. But I will give my best effort in Ohio and shoot for as many miles as possible. I have a strategy that I am going to try out, that worked well last year on the track in Iowa.

I'm modifying it based on the course, but it still calls for about 75% running, 25% walking in the first 12 hours. It will give me plenty of slack time for eating, drinking, using the bathroom, or whatever else I need to do. The second 12 hours plan will be modified to include less running but to stay on a strict pattern of long stretches of running, then some walking.

I find that once I start running, even when my legs are dead, it's easier to keep running than to try to do too many run/walk shift changes. It helps to talk to another runner who is running and keep my mind off my discomfort in the later hours.

I go back to work for a short 8 hour shift tomorrow, then afterwards is the Team PI party in Louisville. More about that, with pictures of all the cool gear, later this week!