Running update: Impressive suck fest

I feel it's only fair that I break up the recent string of everything-is-great running posts with one that's, let's say, not so great.

I'd even go as far as to say that it is an impressive suck fest to rival even that 11 mile run that had me within butt's reach of the toi for the better part of a Saturday.

Don't worry - there's no poop involved in this story, unless you consider my morning's run to be SHITTY, which I certainly do.

But lest I lead you, in any way, to believe that my short career of running has been mostly fun and games and attainment of super slow PRs, please let me share the following with you as a story of caution.

See, I got up this AM with the expressed intent of getting in a nice speedwork-ish type run. I call it "speedwork-ish" because it's not real official speedwork, as the official running types of the world would have me perform, but more of my bastardized I'll-just-do-what-I-want kind of training that gets me out and running and exerting myself to the point that I feel like I've exchanged enough pain for fitness that I can passably call it "speedwork".

Basically I run at pace for 5 minutes followed by a one minute sprint- for 30 minutes and cover a distance just over 3 miles.

So, before anyone gets all, "That's not real speedwork, you lackey!", I will just say, "I know, and I'll thank you to go back to running 880m repeats in your fluttery shorts without butting in while I'm telling a story of woe."

Anyway.

My approach for these runs is always the same:

I get up around the hour of 6, don weather appropriate running wear (or sometimes I wear shorts in the cold because I hate tights), my low-tech watch and tune my iPod to something loud and raucous with plenty of swears. I then do a few stretches on the front porch, set the low-tech digital to 0:00:00 and set off, Seether rattling in my skull.

And about 24 minutes later, I come rolling into the driveway all sweaty and ready to throw the ball with the dog for a few minutes before Real Life of work/hair blowdrying/choosing of painful high heels begins.

Sometimes, if I'm particularly spunky, I'll do the run in the 23s and I consider these days to be spectacular successes. Like, I'll do a little self-five in the backyard so no one can see my loserness.

Sometimes, if I'm particularly sucky, I'll do my run in over 25 minutes and I consider these to be my shame days and, immediately after hitting the driveway and consulting the Suck Watch, I'll reset the chrono to 0:00:00 and pretend like it didn't happen.

And then I will also not get on this blog and talk about my shame. You know how I feel about public shame.

Well, today was a special exception. Because I dragged my lifeless corpse into my driveway 27 minutes after departing.

And that's not the worst part! No. The worst part was The Cramp. The one that accompanied me, by way of my right oblique, throughout my entire run while my stomach churned the tune to Magnum PI. Why Magnum? Dunno. My stomach must also have a thing for Tom Selleck.

And no amount of brief and desperate stretching at annoying traffic lights could fix this The Cramp. It was bound and determined to ride along all 27 minutes worth of my run, making me miserable and mystified all at once.

I haven't had a cramp while running since, well, the beginning? Since when I couldn't pin three running miles together and never had any plans of running a race.

And now, what?

My theories for The Cramp are these:

• It's an aggressive new strain of PMS brought on by a change in The Pill (which would make sense since most proper nouns are related in some organic way, right?)
  
• I was dehydrated from my evening of furious knitting of baby hats for all of my friends having twins wherein I did not drink all my water despite being thirsty as all hell
• I didn't eat any carbs with my din-din last night and, thus, had no juice for the sprints and just burned out before minute five, never to recover
• I suck and am not meant to be a runner

You decide.

Anyway, that's pretty much the extent of my impressive suck fest. And while it may not sound that impressive since there weren't any bodily explosions or near misses with aggressive pre-coffee traffic, it sure felt extra sucky to me since I had all the belief in the world that I was going to go out and really work those sprints this morning in prep for my shortish long eight miler this Saturday.

But no. This 27 minute horror will haunt me throughout my Saturday run.

Bubba - please ready the stretcher.