Running again.

After the rotten post-run migraine on Sunday, I didn't run all week. I was feeling nervous and so I decided to go for some cross-training. I did more lunges, squats and push ups last week than I've done in ages. And my body has been feeling it!

Today, though, I got back in the running shoes and went out for a relaxing 5.5 mile run. It was GREAT! Don't get me wrong: I was still quite nervous after the run, thinking that I might get another migraine. But, I took the time for a proper cool-down then I ate my usual handful of raw almonds and dried cranberries, followed by a glass of water and a cup of coffee. I also took an Advil sinus because I needed to cover myself, just in case.

It all worked and I'm pleased. It felt terrific to be out there running again. Sure, cross-training is important and enjoyable but, really, it isn't running. Nothing compares to a run!

And with that, I'm off to enjoy my Saturday evening and hope that you enjoy yours, too. I'm also sending some good vibes to everyone racing tomorrow - I'm rooting for you!!!

Have a great rest of the weekend, everyone!

~ Felice

Hello, Migraine. I've been worried to see you.

Yesterday started out so well.

Owen woke up in the morning with Conal so I slept in (Full disclosure: I got to sleep in on Saturday, too. I'm lucky!). When I finally got up, I had a smoothie, some coffee and read the paper. It was another warm day so I was looking forward to running in shorts.

I went out for my run and thoroughly enjoyed it.

And then I came home. And it all went downhill.

Within a half hour, I started to feel the migraine coming on. I drank some coffee and took some drugs and felt like crying. I hate my migraines. They are debilitating and evil. Eee-vil.

After three hours of fitful lying around/sorta sleeping in a darkened bedroom, I began to feel better. I couldn't warm up for the rest of the day or night (even though it wasn't cold) and my body felt wrecked. All of my muscles felt as if I had run a really hard race and then followed it up with an hour-long strength workout. Bleh. They still feel that way today. I feel wiped out.

It's such a drag. I haven't had a run-induced migraine in a few months, which has been great. But, I fully admit that just about every time I get back from a run, I'm nervous that I'll get one. I take some steps to stave them off but, unfortunately, I still get them. Normally, I don't get them from easy runs (and yesterday was pretty easy -- 5.6 miles in just over 50 minutes) so yesterday was unexpected. Ugh. Just ugh.

Oh, well. Today is a beautiful, sunny day. Conal had a great time at gymnastics this morning and is now crashed out for his nap, which means I can catch up!

Happy Monday, everyone!

~ Felice

PS: I'm hosting a giveaway at my other site. Check it out here!

Doubt. No doubt.

My confidence was buoyed last week by my relatively successful speed session. My run after the speed work was an easy recovery one and it felt good. Then Saturday came around and knocked me on my butt.

I awoke with a horrible, debilitating migraine. Ugh. I couldn't move. The worst part of it was that Owen had left early in the morning for a round of golf so I had to get up. I had a toddler to take care of.

I made breakfast for Conal and then -- gasp! -- let him watch a half-dozen episodes of Kipper while I attempted to feel better. He had been invited to a birthday party that morning so I needed get going. Then I needed to get home, go for a run (5m fartleks), and get ready for a fundraiser that night.

Guess what was moved off the to-do list? Yeah, the run. After I rallied to take Conal to the party, I came home and had two options: Run or crash. I chose crash. It was probably the right thing to do because after the nap I did feel better and was able to make it to the event that night. Had I not napped, I may have been a no-show. And I had fun getting out!

Here I am with some of my girlfriends who made it to our Imagination Library fundraiser (more info here -- it's a great program!):

Andrea, Bridget, Kelly, me.

Anyway . . . no run on Saturday meant some guilt. And lots of doubts about my abilities. I don't like those doubts! Grr . . . they just kept creeping into my head on Saturday and then Sunday morning.

So what did I do? I tried to chased them away with a great 6.5 mile run Sunday afternoon. I ran a new, very hilly route at a 9:05 pace for the 6.5 miles. These were country roads that don't get a lot of traffic (unless you count geese and horses) so I was just out there enjoying the scenery, running away from the doubts.

Did I succeed? Did I outrun my doubts? Um, not really. I mean, I felt a lot better after the run but I still had some doubts and I still wished I hadn't missed Saturday. There's nothing I can do about that now, so I just need to focus on what's next and what's next is this week's plan. Which is:

Mon: rest
Tues: 4m
Wed: 1m warm-up; 2 x 400 @ 2:00 w/400 rest; 5 x 1000 @ 4:35 w/400 rest; 1m cool-down (total: 7.25)
Thurs: recovery 4m
Fri: rest
Sat: 5m fartlek
Sun: 7m

Total: 27.25

I hope you all had a great weekend! Even with my doubts and the headache, my weekend was a good one (it was Owen's birthday yesterday and I made a yummy, if messy, cake!), so no real complaints here.

~ Felice

Hi, I'm a PC.

At least that's what I feel like, anyway. A PC that locks up and needs to be completely shut down in order to reset itself and function properly again.

Today, I'm fine. Feeling groovy and all that. Yesterday was another story: I awoke with a terrible headache that I just couldn't shake. It was accompanied by cold extremities and almost constant goose bumps. Weird, I know. I get these things. Certain headaches restrict the blood flow to my hands, feet, nose, ears, etc., and they become cold. The goose bumps, I assume, are related.

Yes, I've had this all checked out* and my MRI was fine and the repeated diagnosis was migraine. Well, no kidding.

So, yesterday was a rotten one. The highlight of my day was my 4.5 mile run. I felt great and fully expected that sweating it out would, indeed, sweat it out. It didn't. The headaches, cold extremities and goose bumps remained. Nothing was working so I had to shut it down.

Like any good PC, turning me off for the night, and back on again this morning, did the trick. I'm functioning today. Yippee!

Does anyone else get migraines? Weird coldness, etc.? Have any advice?

Oh! I've been meaning to post a follow-up to the whole email imbroglio from last week. A few of you asked if I responded to Mrs. Zero. Yes, I did. What I wrote back was, "I'm sorry you feel that way, Mrs. Zero." In that way, I didn't stoop to her level but I did let her know that I received her email. She did not respond. I didn't expect her to.

So that's that. Case closed.

I hope everyone has a great Monday!

~ Felice

* It was back in 2006 so I'm contemplating getting checked out again. I'm also thinking of acupuncture. Ever tried it?

Day 2 of Running as Advil.

Another headache this afternoon. Not as bad as my three-day killer but, um, enough already?

Ah, well. Thankfully, I have running. My short, easy run again chased that sucker away. Big love for running. BIG love.

So. A few of you asked about my book. Prepare to be let down! It is not nearly as exciting as it may seem. I do a lot of work-for-hire writing; non-fiction guidebooks, test-prep, that sort of thing. The book that I've been working on for the past two months is a spelling book. Yup. Spelling. For middle school students.

Yeah. Go ahead! Ask me to spell something*. I can do it! I can probably even rustle up a mnemonic for you. What's a mnemonic? Well, that, my friends, you will have to find out for yourselves.

*But let's not go crazy. I don't want be all spelling, all the time, you know? I mean, The Happy Speller just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Running . . . take me away!

I have had a three-day headache that has been simply terrible; it's really gotten me down. Not even I have been able to find the silver lining in the headache cloud that has settled in my personal patch of sky.

I blame stress, which always seems like a good thing to blame where headaches are concerned. So, when I submitted my chapters for the book I've been working on and then finished the final press release that I've been contracted to write, I thought my headache would disappear.

Ah, no.

It took something a little bit stronger to knock this one out: I went for a run.

The 4.5 miles I ran this evening chased my headache cloud into an entirely different part of the sky. (Hope it hasn't settled in your sky...) Finally! I'm back.

I feel like a different person than the one I was for the past three days. I'm not grimacing -- or, at least, not from the pounding pain in my head. Relieved, I can now catch up on some blogs, read the newspaper and maybe, if I'm lucky, get a good night's sleep.

Chicken.

I admit it. I am a chicken.

For all my talk about feeling confident that I won't get a migraine after my hard, hot runs since I've been employing all the good tips people have shared with me, I'm really a chicken.

I was supposed to run a 5k today, with the goal of finishing under 24 minutes. But, I just couldn't get myself to do it. Deep down, I think I was nervous that I would run hard and finish with a debilitating headache and that would ruin the rest of the day.

So, I set out for a nice 6 mile run instead and I enjoyed it. And now, I'm looking toward a different 5k at the beginning of September. The weather should be cooler and I should be less of a chicken by then.

Tips. Really great tips.

A few days ago, I posted a question over at Marathon Mommies. If you recall, I ran a 5K in June after which my reward was a big, honking migraine. Since then, I've been a little nervous every time I've gone for a run in hot weather. I don't want to go through the pain again.

So, I asked the marathon mommies for advice. They gave me some great tips, many of which were so simple and yet so wise:

• Hydrate. Well, yeah. It is so basic, I know. But, I'm not the best hydrator. Hydrater? Not sure. Anyway, I know I need to drink more water (in fact, I made it a post-vacation goal). I've always felt like I drink enough before races but maybe I don't. I know one thing: I am going to drink more!
• Wear sunglasses. Wow. I guess squinting in the sun for 3.1 miles isn't the best thing for someone prone to migraines, huh? I'm now running with sunglasses and it is a different experience. I feel less stress in the head -- why didn't this occur to me, oh say, 10 years ago?
• Stretch the neck and shoulder area. Another thing I'm not great about doing. I probably tense up in that area and will now make a conscious effort not to.

Now that I've incorporated these tips into my routine, I'll be able to run with more confidence on those hot, humid days (which, it seems, are every day recently). I thank the marathon mommies for that!

Other ideas are welcome, too. Do you have any advice to ward off post-race (or other hard exercise) headaches? If so, please drop a comment and share.

And if anyone has any good suggestions for how to keep sunglasses from fogging up during a run, I'd love to hear them! This fogginess is bad...

So I went for bust.

I didn't make my goal of breaking 24 minutes in the 5K this morning. Rats!

I gave it my best shot, though, and I crossed the finish line in 24:15. Just about the same time as my last 5K.

And the race was great! It started and ended at Bruno Stadium (minor league baseball) and there was a nice crowd that came out for the event. The post-race refreshments were served at the covered pavilion and included oranges, cookies, bagels, pop corn and hot dogs. No, I didn't go for a hot dog -- that's a little much for me. We stayed to watch the kids race, which was a loop around the baseball field, and was pretty cool.

The worst part of the day occurred when I got home. I was smacked by a migraine. Ugh! I could tell it was coming on when I started losing vision in my right eye. That progressed to seeing a zigzag aura and then, bam! Full-blown migraine. I took Imitrex at the first sign of the migraine and maybe it helped a little, but not much. I still had the debilitating headache, and still threw up from it.

Four hours later, it is starting to fade and I'm hugely relieved. These migraines suck!

This one was surely brought on by exertion. I've gotten them before when I've run races in the heat and the temperature for today's 5K was hot, but not terrible. I think what did it was that the whole race route was in the sun and that ol' sun was strong.

Bleh. Why do headaches have to go and ruin a perfectly good day?