12.29.08

A morning run. I had assumed when looking outside at the beautiful blue skies that this would be an easy run. I assumed wrong. I struggled a lot on this one for some reason. I don't know if it was the cold or maybe just getting out there early, but I definitely had some constriction in my chest. Not like a bad heart attack kind (i don't think) but just a general lack of being able to breath deep. Every time I did it seemed my lungs were shriveled. My chest area around the sternum seemed to be in some sort of pain the entire run. I thought it would go away, but it never did.

It warmed up quite a bit from the early morning. I could see steam rising from the rooftops of the houses as the sun peaked over the mountains onto them. And then the sun peeked on me and I started to get pretty warm. That obviously didn't help matters as I had dressed pretty warm. So I'll be sure to dress for the sunrise if I run tomorrow. It's hill day tomorrow because Wednesday we are going to Ohio. April's sister will be staying at our house while we are away and taking care of the cats for us. Anyway I'll have to either run hills in the morning tomorrow or Wed, so I think I'm just going to do them tomorrow and get them out of the way so I have one less thing to worry about.

8:30 am. home. 33-40 degrees sunny.
1:06:20, bf 952

Second run started off pretty bad. I had the good old side stitch that develops just at the top of the lung and beneath the rib cage.l If you are a runner you know of what I speak. There are basically two things you do, whether you really intend to or not. The first is to push on the area that hurts. I'm not sure why we do this? Is it instinct? Is is just me? I don't know, but that sometimes gives the illusion of helping. The second thing I do is push through it. I guess some people might stop here, but that's just not the way I roll. I went a good 25-30 minutes just feeling this stitch-pain, each breathe feeling harder than the next. Then, before I even realized it, the pain was gone and I was floating along. The rest of the run was great despite a little inflammation in my big toe joint that showed up toward the end. I really started feeling good. It was a nice 50 degrees, the sun was setting, and the sky was a cloudless blue. So nice to see after weeks of rain and cloudy overcast dreadfulness.

4:10pm. home. 53 degrees sunny.
1:10:52, gm 780