Hungry and Restless

What is becoming more and more apparent during this 50 mile race training is the amount of stress my body is enduring. When I was training for my first 50k several years ago, I knew only a little about the changes but everything was new to me and I couldn’t pinpoint things other than to say I had never done this amount of mileage before. Now, a few years later after a couple marathons and 50k’s worth of training and racing in me I see noticeable differences as I amp up my mileage.

hunger—- I am hungry. There’s no denying that as the number of miles stack up, so does my appetite. Since I’ve already written about this I won’t go much more into it. Please send food.

bacon, kale, runny eggs, amen

rest—- My long runs currently fall on weekends instead of weekdays as in the past. It mostly means that I adjust my run time to extra early to be gone a little less during normal family operating hours. I’d love to report that to make up the early morning difference I go to bed at say 8:00 pm and then sneak in a nap here and there but that has not been the case. I don’t think I caught how little rest I was getting until I finally slept lights out for ten hours straight two nights in a row. The go, go, go was causing me less rest, rest, rest instead of more. This was a pretty subtle change until I was undeniably restless despite a huge weekend of running.  

At least someone's getting a nap

Real sunrise captured after 10 miles

calm—- This one has been perhaps the craziest of them. The directions are pretty straight forward: get up, run, eat, sleep (super simplified- please fill in every other life responsibility). 

While it seems I do this every day, I do not. I get days off.  As of late, however, days off aren't any fun. I start the day solid, thinking of the myriad of things to get done and working my way through them. Somewhere around 1-2:00, my brain starts eating itself. At least that’s what it feel like. Then I get twitchy. I start a task only to end up wandering around not completing much. I  feel a gnawing hungry pain and head to the kitchen to find something. “Good,” I think. “I will calm down.” Nope. My brain feels fuzzy. It's like this every rest day. 

I've done a bit of yoga, lead by my friend Kristy. Anne and I are fiercely trying not to compete- which is the opposite of yoga. We need a lot of help being calm. 

cute yoga mat and tasty smoothie- what's not to be calm about?

I finally figured out what is going on with me. My body is addicted to the high mileage. *low whistle* My body is doing all that it can to stay caught up even on rest days.

All to say, its nice to know I’m not going crazy.