Boulder Half-Marathon: Painful lesson learned

Last Monday I had the day off work and decided to test my new running skills by going for some significant distance. I didn't expect to run the entire time, but I wanted to push myself to run farther than I've run before. In the end, I went for 8 miles, ran 6 of those miles, 4 of those straight through for an hour solid. I was hurtin' by the end of the day and the next. Then on Wednesday I had some dizziness and other MS symptoms crop up that lasted for about a week.

Lesson learned... painfully.

I went too hard too soon in my training and the MS let me know that it wasn't happy with me. I've come a long way in my physical fitness, but I still have to be mindful of pushing myself too hard. When I go too hard I don't just have to contend with strained or sore muscles, I've got a whole host of other issues to contend with, including dizziness and mind numbing fatigue. It took me a week and a half to fully recover and start feeling human again.


So, today I got back on the horse, but more mindful of what I was doing. The weather here has been all over the place lately, and I got tired of fighting the elements so I went to my local rec. center to use their treadmill. OMG! I so see the benefit of using a treadmill. I could control my speed which meant I went at a consistent pace and not in spurts, the surface was level which meant that my feet weren't going every which way. I think that from here on, I'm going to start using a treadmill during the week and then run for distance on the weekend and build up my training that way.

With the resurgence of some MS symptoms, some of which got kinda bad, I worried that my time of remission was over and I was going to have to deal with a whole other round of MS related crap. However, with everything starting to subside, I feel that maybe it was just my body's way of telling me to ease up. Even so, I have an appointment with a new neurologist on Feb. 1st to check things over just to be on the safe side. Even if the MS has indeed flared up again, it's not going to stop me from completing all my goals. I'm going to push through to matter what it takes.

Failure is not an option.