Running on empty

I made a really, really big mistake today. See if you can figure out where the mistake is as I describe my morning.

I had a nice healthy bowl of steel cut oats with blueberries, pecans, cinnamon and sugar for breakfast, drank my water and took my vitamins, and walked the dogs for an hour and ten minutes. Upon returning, I showered and changed and gathered up my workout clothes. I even checked to make sure I had my lap counter and my heart rate monitor and a borrowed picture frame I needed to return to Betsy in my gym bag. She came to pick me up just before ten, and off we went to the gym together. I did NOT forget my running shoes like I did the day of the six-miler last week, yay! I changed into my workout garb, clipped my pedometer to my waist, hooked up my heart rate monitor, and grabbed my water bottle to go upstairs to the track. The schedule called for four miles today, which is my new "base" distance (Four is the new three! Whoo!). It's a lot less intimidating after having run six last Friday. On this track, 4 miles is 25.6 laps. I just round it up to 26.

I was a little sore from the Pilates class last night (I had a bad spot off to the side and I couldn't see very well, and I was tired from working until midnight Tuesday night), so I walked my warmup laps very mindfully, doing a preflight check to make sure all my parts were in good enough order to run. I even noted that there was an open elliptical machine if needed.

And then I hit the start button on my watch and launched slowly into my first mile. I was literally pushing the button on the lap counter to mark lap 1 when it happened. The mistake made itself known...

My stomach growled.

Oh, [censored unprintable], I forgot to eat a snack after my shower!! Steel cut oats are a great breakfast, but I ate them at 7:30. Walking the dogs probably burned most of the calories I got from them. And here it was three hours later, and I was JUST starting my run, and my stomach said very clearly, "Look, bub, this is your first flash of that 'low fuel' light on your dash here. Stop now and no one will get hurt."

I was torn as to what to do about it. The gym has a snack bar, so I could have just stopped and gotten a smoothie, waited 20 minutes or so for it to digest a little, and started over. But I came up in Betsy's car, so she'd have to wait that much longer for me to be done. I didn't want to keep her there all day because of my oversight.

So I decided to run the first two miles. Then I could walk a lap, drink some water, and see how I felt. Then I could do the last two, or--wait! I remembered that I had a bag of peanut M&Ms in my gym bag. If I couldn't hang on, I could always go back to the locker room and devour a handful or two of M&Ms. One of my running buddies had said something about them having the right ratio of carbs to protein for glycogen replenishment or something like that. Plus they're crazy tasty.

I felt a little better just knowing that little yellow bag was there for me if I really needed it and returned to my running, making sure to keep a nice easy pace. Whoever was in charge of the music was on an 80s binge, playing "Manic Monday," "Shake It Up," "Talking in Your Sleep," "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," and "Footloose." They even threw on some Michael Jackson. Good times, good times. Of course, most of the students working there weren't even born when those songs came out. I'm dating myself again.

I hit mile 2 at just over 21 minutes (What the heck?!? I was barely moving!!) and slowed to walk and drink. The water did help a little, but then I could feel it sloshing around in my stomach since there was nothing else to keep it company. I decided to try and get through mile 3, and then stop and walk another lap if I had to.

So much of running is bargaining with yourself, especially when conditions are less than ideal: you're crazed with hunger, or tired, or running into a 20-mph headwind. Holding it all together when you're starting to come unglued is exactly what people mean when they talk about mental toughness.

I play all sorts of games to keep my mind off food during mile 3: I count each time my right foot hits the ground for a whole lap. I mentally sing along with the 80's music. ("Billie Jean is...NOT my lover...ooh! She's just a girl...") I chant the words on the Team in Training bracelet flopping around on my left wrist, a purple rubber doohickey the LLS office gave me in early January that I have worn ever since: "Train. Endure. Achieve. Matter." (See? It spells TEAM. Isn't that cute? Also corny, but it helps when things get tough.) "Train. Endure. Achieve. Matter." Again and again in rhythm with my footfalls: "Train. Endure. Achieve. Matter."

At the top of every lap, I run past a clock. I watch the time pass and try to figure out what lap I might be on, but I don't want to open my right hand and look at the lap counter because the number might be really low, and then I will be crushed. So it becomes another game: "I bet I'm not at 20 yet. I'll keep going. Don't want to look yet." And another lap. "No, not yet." The next time around, I think, "Okay, I'll look the next time I pass by. 20 would be good, and 21 would be even better." And then when I open my hand, a smug grin at the "21" on the display. Yay!

Only five more laps to go, and this I can handle like a countdown. Train. Endure. Achieve. Matter. Keep going. Never mind that you're afraid to look down at your stomach for fear you'll see a giant black hole there. Is this what Ripley felt like in "Alien"? It feels like there's no there there.

Click. Four laps to go.

I imagine Kim saying "Pull your navel back toward your spine!" and think how easy that is now since there is NOTHING BETWEEN MY NAVEL AND MY SPINE BUT A GIANT BLACK HOLE OH FOR THE LOVE OF PETE I AM STARVING!

Click. Two down, three to go.

There is a horde of students standing in the entrance area. Looks like a class group. Uh-oh, soon the track will be overrun and I will have to weave in and out of heavy traffic to finish and why did they have to come now?? Couldn't they have just waited another five minutes? Can't they see there is a very glucose-deprived runner trying to finish off her four miles here?!?

Click. Just two more laps and those M&Ms will be mine!!

I am speeding up even though I know I shouldn't because I just want this to be OVER already and I can practically taste the colorful candy coatings going crunch, crunch and the chocolate melting and the peanuts meeting their maker against my molars and THERE ARE THREE STUDENTS RUNNING ABREAST ACROSS MY LANE AND BOTH OF THE ADJACENT LANES and they are loping along in slow motion and yakking with each other and there is nowhere for me to go and I might be forced to kill them. "ON YOUR LEFT!" I bark in a manner designed to make them jump, and they do, and I swing to the very outside of Lane 4 and sweep right on by their candy asses. (Boy, am I cranky. Don't mess with me two laps before the end of a four-miler on an empty stomach.)

Click. Last lap, last lap! Victory and M&Ms are within reach! Just get around this track one more time and you are done! I can feel that I am red in the face at this point, but I don't care about anything any more except finishing, so I push myself around and cross the line already lunging for my water bottle. Despite my hunger-addled state, I still did 4.06 miles (that's the extra .4 lap in there) in a very respectable 43:15 for a 10:39 pace per mile. It seems sub-11-minute miles are the new normal.

Good time, but God, what an ugly run. Now I know what running on empty feels like. Those last two miles were really not fun. Isn't it ironic that this happens to me the very day after I write this long convoluted post about fueling? I suppose this was a good reminder of the utterly basic, very simple Rule #1 of fueling: EAT SOMETHING BEFORE YOU RUN, STUPID.