That turned ugly in a hurry

That's what I get for waiting on my run. Let me preference this by saying I've had a combined 8 hours of sleep in the last two days, but usually lack of sleep doesn't get to me as far as running goes; today it did. I woke up and went to work at 7:30, with the intention of running to the Xcel Center and back for a nice 10 miler because my 9:30 class was canceled. I figured by 9 that wasn't going to happen, so I figured split the difference, I'll go 6 and a half. I got out there, about a mile in I was just sloppy with my form, and my muscles just ached like crazy. I ran back to I hall and took a two hour nap. I woke up, went to class, and tried it again at 2:45.

To borrow a couple phrases from Steve Runner at Phedippidations, I "decorated that 6 mile stretch of roadway" In other words, I puked all over the place. Now, I'm a runner, so that stuff happends and you move on. I didn't feel bad at all, so what the hell. Well, probably a mile or two down the road, my chest started to hurt a lot-- just below my ribcage on the left side. It was the worst pain I've felt in a while, even worse than my ruptured appendix a year ago. It was a sharp, stabbing pain that I just couldn't run with. I'd go maybe 200 meters and have to stop because the pain was too much to run with, and I didn't want to pass out, because my Road ID is still in the mail.

Now, one thing you should know about me is that I don't feel pain like normal people do. Its called a "reduced sensitivity to pain." You'd think that'd be pretty cool right? but it has its plusses and minuses; here are some examples. I was running this winter, tripped over a root, split my running tights open, and got up and proceeded to run 5 more miles. When I got back, I had a small river of blood from my knee down into my shoe-- I didn't feel a thing. Okay, so that's good, but what about this: I thought I had stomach flu, I went to school, I played all 60 minutes of our hockey game. Next day, I went to the doctor, he sent me to the ER. Ruptured appendix. Doctor says "good thing you came in, because one more day, and you'd be dead. That's bad.

Bottom line, when things hurt me, its usually something serious. My first thought was a punctured lung, and scared the shit outta myself. Get real, Matt. How could that even happen? Second thought was I pulled an ab muscle. I do half an hour of core every day, so improbable, but still possible. Now, I'm thinking it was just a cramp/ dehydration thing because:
- It was 68 and humid
- Even with the stopping and starting, I ran at a pretty good clip, 7:27's-- way too fast.
- I hadn't eaten a real meal in two days, not to mention carboloading (which I usually do once a week) so my glycogen stores were probably almost gone
- The sleep thing
- I probably didn't drink near enough

Sorry for the long post, fellas