I have always enjoyed running, but I seriously got into it around the age of sixteen or seventeen when I was dealing with my first months of being one of the chronically ill. Back then I had what was titled as gastroparesis. I won’t go too far into it, but it is basically paralysis of the stomach with an unknown cause. The stomach stops moving and it stops digesting. If careful and lucky, a little bit of food can be digested, but the grand majority of what is consumed is not digested and the gastroparetic (I don’t think that is an actual word, but this is MY blog. I use whatever fake words I want) of my variety vomits up anything and everything that she attempts to eat. In my world, what goes down must come up, and I was left with very compromised nutrition. Especially when this disease was very new to me, I felt very weak all of the time. I was unable to take part in the activities that I loved to the extent that I formerly could, if I could take part in them at all. I stopped playing lacrosse, I could snowboard less often and with much less intensity, I was out of school more days than I was present, and my social life was sliced and diced into some lame representative sample of what it had formerly been. I couldn’t tell you this then, but I am a big believer in the “what you do determines who you are”. And I wasn’t able to do very much. My self identity became “the sick girl” and I was becoming increasingly depressed as my life became more and more affected by my illness.
Then I found running. I started slow, as everyone does, but within 3 months of buying my first pair of “real” running shoes, I was running six miles a day, five days a week. I was hooked. Running made me feel strong. Not only did I learn how to push my body and make it work for me when it was otherwise failing, but I found a beautiful place in my mind that stretched far beyond my sixty daily minutes of movement and sweat.
And soon, a long-missing desire reemerged to me. In the months between the time that I became ill and the time I discovered running, I had lost a lot of drive. I had mostly given up on eating because of the frustration it caused me. I felt helpless when I regurgitated what I ate. The act of forcing food into my stomach and just hoping it would stay there long enough to give me some nutrition seemed futile. So I stopped caring. My body shrank and my functionality decreased. I did not care. I knew that this state of mind and this practise could kill me and I did not care.
But then, that first time I ran for a full hour without stopping, I started wanting to eat and drink. I wanted to run and I could not run without eating. I wanted to fuel the exploration that I engaged in through my running, I wanted to build muscle so that I could run farther and faster. I wanted to try. I wanted to take control of my nutrition so that I could run, so that I could live.
In October 2008, after 2 years of being sick, I had surgery to physically take away my body’s ability to vomit. My recovery afterwards was slow and strange, but about 14 weeks post-op I ran my very first race, a slow and steady 5k. I then took a very huge leap and started training for my first marathon immediately afterwards. 2009 was full of racing for me and I discovered my true calling as a distance runner. I ran a 4:05 at the New Jersey Marathon that year and kept up with my running afterwards. During my first year of college, running was my sanity keeper once again. Although I never found the time to race with a hectic schedule and heavy workload, I continued to impress myself with my private performances of increasing speed and distance. I knew that in the next marathon I made time for that I would shatter my PR and from that point on would improve and improve. I couldn’t wait.
Life happened and many months went by without racing, even though running independently remained a huge foundation to my lifestyle and person. And then in November 2010 something happened. The anatomical alteration done to my stomach 2 years previous failed and I began vomiting again. While it was just slight at first, I soon became worse than I ever remembered being before and I could not eat anything. I was happily living with my boyfriend in Ireland but soon after falling ill had no choice but to move 3,500 miles away to go back home to New Jersey and pursue attention of the doctors who had “fixed” me in 2008. So I did on January 9th of this year. After a few wretched tests and weeks of waiting, the fix-all-end-all surgery that I was hoping to receive was shown to not be an option for me. I was then told that the doctors had done all that they could do and that there were no more options. I had to live with my condition and figure out a way to get by.
That... sucked. I spent a few weeks laid up in bed, half out of physical exhaustion due to my malnutrition, and half out of sheer depression at the prospect of being this sick forever. Once again, I stopped caring. I did not eat, I did not drink. I did not care.
And then one day I woke up and looked at the calendar. I expected to see January written at the top of the page. I felt like not a day had passed from the day I came home. I had made no progress with my health and no advancements with my life. But, the calendar read March. Three months of my life had gone by and I felt like I hadn’t blinked once. I had been wallowing so deeply in my self pity, let my illness once again take ahold of my body and mind so ferociously, that I had forgotten to live. I could not and would not let this go on.
So I went outside and went for a run.
The second my feet hit the pavement, I felt like myself again. I tired more easily and could not run as quickly, but my legs and mind remembered exactly what this action was that I was doing, and I knew inside and out that this is what I am meant to do. And let me tell you, I have no intention of stopping this time.
**description of my experience at the LBHM begins here!!
So I ran the Long Branch Half Marathon yesterday. I have spent months rebuilding my mileage and regaining my speed, but most importantly I have been waking up the warrior and runner inside me. Laugh if you want, but there is no better way to describe it. Anyway, you can imagine this race being a big deal to me. My first race in over a year. My first long distance race in two years. My first accomplishment since becoming sick again. My first milestone in a long line of achievements that I desire in becoming the person I once was, the person I want to be, and in uncovering the runner that I know I can be.
I was really lucky to be able to run this race with my big brother Kevin. This was his first race. He started running a few months ago and really took to it, just like I had when I first started. I like to think that there’s something in our blood that destines us to be runners, but I don’t know. Kevin and I broke out at a strong but comfortable pace. We weaved through the other runners and kept pounding out each mile between 8:30 and 8:50. We both were feeling good at the halfway point and kept going strong for a few miles after that.
If you are a distance runner, you know about mid-run fuelling. On distances around 12 miles or more (though that number varies person to person), you need to supplement your expelled energy with carbs and electrolytes in order to complete the distance and keep going strong. Most runners use gels designed for this purpose- they are a pasty substance in foil packets made of pure carbs and a few vitamins or electrolytes, depending on the brand of gel. On my distance runs in the past I have used GU gel. I always planned my fuelling ahead of time and kept myself going strong and feeling good. I have had to be slightly more careful than other runners due to my unique digestive system, but I have been smart about it and have always had great success with my fuelling. Unfortunately, I have never run a distance event with my stomach in the condition that it is in now. So you can imagine that fuelling for me now is a relatively huge problem.
I have depended heavily on gatorade for the past few months on my longer runs, finding the pre-mixed carb/water ratio to be easier to handle with my sensitive stomach than the thickness of a gel and self-measured water. But gatorade does not give me enough of a boost to complete more than 9 miles or so with vigour, and I even find myself kneeling over to vomit it up from time to time.
I made a mistake in my training and refused to experiment with fuel sources on long runs. I was in a bit of denial that I needed to. I was scared to find out what doesn’t work, because I was afraid that it would be everything. And I was most of all afraid to once again awaken that sense of helplessness and futility in the inability to take command of my incoming energy. So I ignored the need to experiment during my training and the day of the race I decided to use Sports Beans (jellybean-like supplements with added electrolytes and such). I figured that these would get into my bloodstream quickly and that their small size would allow me more control of how much I take in at once.
I ate my first few beans around mile 4 and felt their kick about a mile and a half later. I felt fine. I felt great, in fact. I was keeping up with my solid pace comfortably and I was enjoying myself. I made sure to have just a few beans at each water station so that I could wash down their surprisingly goopy texture immediately.
Kevin and I were still running together at this point, separating by just a bit at a time due to crowd dispersion (it was a crowded race) but we would always meet up side by side again after a few minutes. Mile 9 came and Kevin was a little bit ahead of me for a stretch. I was really in the zone of my running when I tripped on a manhole cover and I was sprawled out on the pavement before I knew what had happened. It happened quickly, as falls do, and I was filled with a whole bunch of endorphins and was really confused for a second. I had fallen right at the edge of the road and there was a small group of spectators who immediately came over to me and offered me a hand up. I looked up and ahead, and two runners had actually STOPPED running (I couldn’t believe it) and turned around to get me on my feet. There were a lot of “are you alright?”s and such things, but I was having a hard time answering. Physically I was fine. My elbow was bleeding but it was nothing. I was choked up and my mind was saying, “RUN”. So the second I got pulled up by the astoundingly kind spectators and runners, I managed to nod to an, “are you okay?” and spurt out a “thank you” (I hope it sounded sincere, because I have never meant those two words more) before turning heel and continuing to run.
But I was upset. I couldn’t tell you why, but I felt my entire emotional state flush into a little whirlpool and I felt completely choked up. I knew I wasn’t going to cry but I felt like I should, and my throat began to close and I was wheezing for a few hundred yards. I knew I couldn’t go on like that and that I had to relax and allow my airway to open again before going on, so I pulled to the side to catch my breath. And you know what? That made things worse. In the few seconds that I was stopped I felt a lifetime go by as I watched runners pass me as I stayed stagnant, standing and wheezing. Then, after a perceived decade (but actually less than ten seconds), a fellow running grabbed my shoulder and pushed me forward, saying, “No, come on. You got this.” My body responded before my mind could and I was running again. My throat opened up and I was running, but I was dizzy. But I was okay, and I kept going.
That is when I started getting chills. It was a hot, sunny day, and I knew damn well that I should not have goosebumps. The chills became so overwhelming that I almost stopped at two separate ambulances to ask for help (how they could help, I did not know. But I knew that something was wrong with me and I needed to do something about it) but I knew that if I did so that they would not let me finish the race. And there was absolutely no way in hell I was leaving that course without traversing every inch of it.
But that’s when it all went to hell. I stopped to vomit for the first time at mile ten and lumbered on vomiting every quarter mile or so for the remainder of the race. I have never walked during a race in my entire life, nor during a training run. It’s against my code of conduct as a runner. But I walked for probably a total of a mile of the last 3. I hated myself for it. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, but if I wanted to finish I had no other choice. I found strength in the last mile and had the most excellent tranced out sprint in the last quarter mile, where the crowd thickened and the finish line was in view. It felt more effortless than any final push ever has, but I felt my heart sink into my stomach and digest into nothing when I saw the clock reading 2:17 as I ran across the timing strip.
My official chip time was 2:04:38, a full ten minutes slower than I had hoped to run.
This race was humbling and a learning experience. It was a lesson in how we are constantly evolving as runners and people, and how we have to adjust our expectations as we do. It was a lesson in listening to my body honestly, in not avoiding the hard truths just because I don’t want to deal with them. It was a lesson in taking pride in my achievements, even when a part of me wants to call them a failure.
I am proud of myself for finishing, don’t get me wrong. But not matter how much I’d like to say that I could, I could never be perfectly content with a simple finish without a time goal. I did not achieve my time goal but I learned what to do in order to give it a better shot next time. I do not think that I fell short in this race due to a lack of fitness. I know that I have trained hard and that I have earned my ability to hold a solid pace that I can be proud of, and I will continue working to maintain that fitness and ability and I will train to get better. Where my true intellectual focuses need to be are in the areas of race routine and fuelling. I need to conquer my racing obstacles in order to achieve all that I want to, and so I will. Unfortunately I need to conquer a few demons in the process and accept the fact that I am not invincible and cannot control my body’s malfunctions simply with will. I have to learn how my totally messed up digestive system works and either work with it or trick it. It will take a long, long time, but I will do what I need to do.
It’s going to be a long road, but I am going get back into marathoning. I am going to train hard and race confidently, and probably become an expert on alternative fuelling. I feel like this blog is going to be an important tool in this whole process, so I hope you’re ready for some reading!
Thanks for reading this if you did. I know it’s probably only really interesting to me, and that some things that I choose to elaborate on may bore other people, but I’m getting what I need to out there, and I feel a whole lot better after having done so. This is a huge part of my life and I appreciate you sharing it with me by reading this blog in part or in whole. You have a lovely day, reader!
Great post! :-)
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