Rebound Running

Runners, has this ever happened to you? You have a bad run. It's frustrating and it fills you with self doubt. But a week goes by, you start feeling a little better, and it's time for your next long run. So you go out there and you do it. And this time, everything just feels right. Afterwards, you think you could go a few more miles and you just feel so... alive. I'm sure many runners go through the experience of rebounding after a bad run and feeling great on the next one. But not me. I feel like shit.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess I did complete 17 miles today, so my complaining may seem insincere. Tough. The point is that as my mileage increases, I'm feeling disproportionately worse. Around mile 14 I suddenly stopped running because I felt for sure that the contents of my stomach were about to be emptied on to the path. The scary thing is that I wasn't sure which end it was going to be coming out of. Fortunately I was able to settle things and move forward. This isn't the first time I've felt like that, but this was definitely the most severe. I have now accepted the fact that it's not a question of IF I will ever puke (or worse) during a run, but a matter of WHEN.

The odd thing is that when I got home I was too tired to eat. Not too tired to cook, but to eat. I put two Snickers in the freezer last night so they'd be wating for me. Didn't touch them. Had a bag of Ruffles in the cabinet; wasn't interested. I forced myself to nibble down a baloney sandwhich.

Fortunately, next week is a scheduled step-back in mileage so I "only" have to do a half-marathon. I spent a year dreading that distance and now I'm looking forward to it. How twisted is that?