Day 281, 84 To Go

October 8, 2013

Today, Tuesday, I am going to talk about a very important, and often debilitating issue facing runners.  Yes, I am talking about dreaded GI issues (that's gastro intestinal for the uninitiated).

Who hasn't had the experience, especially on a race day, where you have to go to the bathroom, but the lines to the porta potty are huge, and the race start is just minutes away.  What do you do?  Do you start the race and hope your body "forgets" that you have a parasitic monster in your colon with the intention of bursting out of your stomach (ok, your butt) like in Aliens?  Do you just wait on line and hope you don't miss the start and if you do you just start your watch when you start and ignore the time recorded for all posterity in the race results?

Of course, the answer is, don't eat a bunch of crappy, fat filled or fiber filled food the night before your race.  Hell, stay away from the crap for a few days.  Eat healthy food.  You can eat more carbs than normal, but stay away from too many veggies the night before your race too.

What happens when you have GI issues during training?  Normally, this isn't too much of a problem, depending on where you train.  Usually, you can find bathrooms, or if worse comes to worse, you just go home. 

What if you are far away from home? Miles even?  What if the pain emanating from your colon is intense and it is beginning to make you run like your butt was stapled shut.  You know what I mean...the IHAVETOPOOP waddle!  I can tell you, from experience, that you are probably just fucked.  Unless...

So, years ago, I was running in NY in Somers, a quaint little town about 2 hours from NYC.  I lived there for a time and it was a great place to train.  There was a school nearby with a track I could use, and the roads were in pretty good shape, even if there was a decent amount of traffic on them.  You could find roads that you could ride or run on without much trouble.  The terrain was rolling hills, so it was perfect for a long ride or run.  One day, I started out for a 14 mile run.  I was about 5 miles in when the pain started.  It started with a gurgle, deep in my colon.  Uh oh.  Of course,  I kept going.  At about 6 miles in, I knew I was in trouble.  I had no phone (this is pre-iphone days and who took their little flip top phone out on a run?) and I was far from home.  The area was fairly rural, so there were homes with lots of woods surround thing, front and back.  What I needed was a place to hide (i.e., squat) and something to, uh, wipe with.  But what?

Aha!  I found someone's Sunday newspaper.  I grabbed it and RAN!  I few hundred meters of the IHAVETOPOOP waddle, I found a house with a large, wooded front yard.  There was also a deer family grazing.  Shit.  Well, I figured if I didn't bother them, they wouldn't bother me.  I was right.  I found a log and EXPLODED!  I used the newspaper, sorta, kinda, buried my scat, and finished my run!

More recently, I am afraid, I ran into a similar situation while running on my street.  This time, I was only a mile away from home and I had my phone, but the urgency was a bit more pressing, so to speak.  I could have called Honey and said, "Honey!  I have to POOOOP!  Come get me," but that just seemed too embarrassing.

Somewhat less emabarrasing, I figured, would be squatting behind some bushes and letting loose.  So, that is what I did.  Now, the bushes are only across a narrow street from a line of homes.  The only plus was that there are no lights on this little section of my street.  A car did happen to drive by while I was otherwise indisposed, but I'm pretty sure they didn't see me.  Now that I was done, I remembered I forgot something.  No newspaper.  The bushes did have long, narrow leaves though.  So I apologized to the bush as I tore off numerous leaves and took care of the mess.  Sort of.  Actually, I'm pretty sure I was a mess, but what choice did I have?  Of course, I finished the run.  I ran back after the incident and made sure I stayed close to home while I finished.

It was not a pleasant experience, I can tell you that.  Newspaper is MUCH better for wiping your butt than leaves.

Here are my numbers for today's non pooping run:

Time: 30:00

Distance: 3.26 miles

Pace: 9:12/m

Max Pace: 7:51/m

Calories: 371

Avg HR: 133

Max HR: 149

Not much to say about it other than it is done.  And my belly feels much better too today.  I should stay away from fast food.  Really.

Run for Life!!