another experiment

I slept in and thus missed run club completely....I was hoping to make it, but needed to catch up on sleep first. It was too cold for my liking anyway when I got up later (I'm a princess), so I worked on chem projects for about 7 hrs without snacks. Yeah, chemistry is anti-snacking. All those clear liquids that aren't really water...

So by the time I got to dinner, I was starving. Two plates of hamburger helper-esque stuff and some desert went down pretty quickly. then I figured, hey, why not run? This would be great training for the ultra, to run with a gut full of somewhat potentially volatile substances. I am a wuss when it comes to this sort of thing, after a few close calls and a year on Bentyl, but there is no way I'm going to run 50 miles on an empty stomach. And I've gotten used to eating during my long-long runs, but not to such a degree. Some balaklava and expresso is nothing compared to a mess of noodles and fried beef. Yes, there are greater challenges, but in due course. Baby steps. If I can trot comfortably while stuffed with kimchi or poutine or whatever, I'll feel a lot more confident about the ultra.

I grabbed the dog and off we went. It felt easier than yesterday's run/jog/walk/slog. My legs were lighter. And when the hamburger helper concoction was still in my stomach, I was ok, I think. Not 100% comfortable, but ok. After about a half hour, though, the magic started to really happen.

In the past, I would have cut the run short at this point and walked home. (Except for that one time I was stuck in the field grade officer neighbourhood on a really small post--I had to bolt out of there asap before some wife of major/colonel so-and-so saw me crap my shorts, and in front of her children too, and of course this would have shot through the grapevine even faster than, well, the velocity of the incriminating evidence....it was honestly that kind of place, but fortunately there was a public washroom about 10 min away. I hit that sucker hard and disgusted a couple of poor old ladies in there instead.)

At any rate, I was relatively unenlightened then.

You see, I have since learned about the external sphincter. This is the very last gateway to the outside world. And it is composed of voluntary muscle. That's right, my conscious thought can override the impulses of my reptilian brain. This is the mantra I have armed myself with during this eat-and-run adventure: 'the external sphincter is voluntary muscle the external sphincter is voluntary muscle the external sphincter, etc' and with that I can cinch that baby CLOSED.

Not without waves of increasing discomfort and mounting self doubts, but I held it together for an hour and twenty minutes. I'd been hoping for an hour, so I was happy. Triumphantly, we walked the last mile home. Briskly.

In retrospect, it would have been good to resume jogging after, say, ten minutes of walking, just to see if ten minutes would be enough to eliminate the problem....something else for the future. I can get jacked up on cabbage or something beforehand.

At any rate, I'm proud of myself!

A quick note about the dog...he didn't handle winter well. Not much I can do with him when it's -20, and I can cut his food intake only so much. A few days ago, he weighed in at a disgusting 70.5 pounds, so we'll have regular weigh ins, starting next weekend. Now that it's not totally winter anymore, we can run more, and that will help a lot. He should be around 54-58 pounds.