Day 13

I did my resistance exercises yesterday, mostly a resistance program I've used before from Matt's Fitzgerald's book Brain Training for Runners. I need more core stability. I'm also doing push ups and sit ups.

Sadly, I'm off the sun salutations in the morning routine--it wasn't clicking with me. I might be better off with something less vigourous and/or less head below the heart. That doesn't feel right when I'm still waking up. However, what was working this week is heading out for a run first thing. :)

Today, the run wasn't quite first thing, but close enough. My husband, dog, and I ran for almost a 1/2 hr, and I mean run. It wasn't terribly fast, but it wasn't jogging. My husband's comfortable pace is 9-9:30/mile (slower than that, and he finds it jarring); I was really glad to do that. It was revealing: my aerobic capacity is still ok, I was maintaining an easy run breathing pattern (4-2 or 4-4) comfortably; however, the muscular end of things, though improving, still has a way to go. I still don't have the juice I should have--either my muscles are weaker or less of them are working as hard (or at all?). Definitely, I have a weakened core, which could eventually lead to ITBS if I'm not careful. Still, it was a very encouraging run.

Especially encouraging since yesterday was a bad gut day. I'm still adjusting to the no wheat diet, which is easy in my house, but not so much out of it. I went with my husband to the Officer's mess, and the main course was breaded catfish. I went there hungry, but there were mashed potatoes without ground pepper so I filled up at least. We were going out for dinner to a pub, and I figured I would fill up on fries if worse came to worst, so I didn't have much to eat after lunch. Well, this pub didn't have fries. I ordered nachos. They were covered by a salsa with ground pepper in it--I'd forgotten to ask beforehand. Since my only other option at that place was a salad, which probably also had ground pepper in the dressing (I've been tripped up by that before), and I was starving, I ate the nachos. For a while I figured that, hey, not subjecting my innards to wheat made them more durable. And then the cramps, heartburn, and nausea hit. It was bad. I felt like I was coming down with food poisoning or something; for a while I was kind of worried that there was more happening than just the ground pepper...anyway, I nursed a ginger ale and breathed deeply and calmly and hung out in the loo a bit. Things got better after a while; this morning was still a bit rough, but ok. Usually, I back off of anything at the first hint of ground pepper--often such a slight hint that I doubt myself until I actually see a stray grain of pepper--so this was the most pepper I'd eaten in eons. It was a good wallop.

I have to figure out how to manage socializing a bit better! Giving up beer kind of sucks, but I miss the breaded bar food a lot more!

But the run today went well so I feel that I'm not giving these things up in vain. I'm definitely feeling more energetic in general. I hope the muscle tiredness wears off soon. Last time, it took about a week and a half, I think, but things were worse this time so I'm not expecting the recovery to be that quick.

Meanwhile, I'm hungry. Very hungry. I took iron supplements after the run and ate chickpeas, lentils and rice, usually quite filling, but I'm still craving meat. So we got a couple of nice dry-aged steaks for supper :)