Marina's Bloggariffic

During the weekend I hit 22 km on my training schedule – the longest distance that I’ve gone so far. And it will only get longer in the coming weeks.  Eek! (>_<)

I forced myself not to think too much about it as I don’t want to freak out. I’ll just do what I can. For whatever reasons if it happens that I couldn’t run any more, I’ll just walk the remaining distance.

In the morning, I saw the most glorious sunrise outside of my window.  I went ahead and had my breakfast as usual, did my warm ups, mixed my energy drink, then kissed the sleeping Cart and finally headed out of the door in trepidation.

I read online that once you go for longer runs, you should carry with you something that gives you an energy boost like an energy bar to recover the calories that you’ve burned. I haven’t tried energy bars personally, but I think it’s a hassle, trying to munch it while you’re half dead and huffing and puffing away.

So recently, I was at the supermarket and at length, chose the Enervit G Sport energy drink.

Inside the tin, is white crystal grains :

Which you take two spoonfuls of and mix it with 500 ml of water which then changes to light orange.

I don’t usually drink stimulants like coffee, and I’ve been cutting out on carbonated drinks for my training. Which could be the reason why I had a curious feeling while drinking it on my on runs.

Remember how I’ve been saying that I keep feeling tired at the end of my runs? Compared to my previous trainings, the past two times when I took this drink with me, I didn’t feel as tired despite covering more distance

What is in this thing? Are there drugs inside? I feel more alert as compared to before.

Nevertheless, while it helped in keeping up my energy, it didn’t help with the burning sensation that I felt in my thighs. And as I desperately tried to find new paths to cover in my route, I felt like crying as I did the last 2 km.

Two things kept going through my mind :

1. Pain

For me, once I’ve started going past 15km, it’s not play time any more – my ankles start to feel strained, my thighs feel as if they are burning inside. And recently, my toes are starting to bleed slightly from the abrasion. I was surprised to see a curious stain on my shoe and alarmed to see dried blood, the same colour from the stain on the shoe, on my toe.

Even my running top is making my arms chafe and there is a long mark across my underarm. It never did that before! And I now understand how there are people who has nipple bleeding while doing long distance running.

I’m toying with the idea of jogging without my shoes on, but for the thought of all the stones, broken glass and other sharp things on the road.

2. Fear

With the pain throbbing through my legs, I started to question myself, “What am I doing? Why am I doing this? What was I thinking? I can’t do this! FML. I want to kill myself“.

I kept on going nevertheless. After all, it’s just a couple of kilometres more. If I quit now, it would be stupid and a terrible waste.

And when I was finally done, I hobbled home and felt a surge of emotion.  Cartcart greeted me and when I looked at him, I couldn’t decide to cry from all the pain or cheer from my satisfaction on accomplishing such a tough mission. In the end, I just groaned and quickly did my cooling down stretches using the counter on my phone.

Speaking of phones, after going out with the GPS on for my Nexus for about 3 hours, the  battery got depleted significantly. As I don’t feel like spending 200 euro for a GPS watch, I’m contemplating to use my old Nokia Phone instead.  It should last for a bit longer.

After showering, all I wanted to do was to stay on the sofa and vegetate in front of the telley. I don’t even want to move at all unless necessary. I don’t even mind the idea of using an IV drip with my lunch mashed up in a bag if that means that I don’t have to move my jaws.

Thankfully, at this point of time of writing, I don’t feel any soreness in my body, which is actually quite surprising to me. It probably means that my body is growing stronger. I still have to move slowly nevertheless, as my right ankle will complain if I move too fast.

I salute those with full time jobs and are still able to train for the marathon. The fact that are they able to do this and still have the energy to socialise later is really impressive to me.

Regardless, I’m still alive and I’m crossing my fingers that whatever that doesn’t kill me will only make me stronger.

Week 8 down and 8 more weeks to go till #rinazdoes42km!

It’s been a while since I did a running post, so I thought that I’d update how it went so far.

It’s now about halfway through the marathon training and I’m still feeling relatively good so far and I feel a sense a relief somewhat each time I cancel out the trainings that I’ve already done.

Yesterday I jogged for 18 kms and interestingly, I didn’t feel like dying as I did last year for the half marathon training. I did feel very tired though.  While my heart and upper body felt fine, my thighs and knees were complaining badly!

I remember last year, after running this distance, I just wanted to slump down on the floor as soon as I reached home. But this time round, amazingly, I still had a bit of energy left to go grocery shopping afterwards (albeit very slowly)

At this point of typing, I just came back from the San Giovanni Addolorata hospital (Which isn’t too far away from San Clemente by the way)

In Italy, it is a requirement to be certified by a sports doctor before you could participate in the half marathon/marathon. It can be tedious as it involves a lot of steps and is rather costly.

This time round, I found out that this can also be done in public institutions, which may be cheaper for some as they could claim a percentage of what they paid from their union.

The first step is to go to your family doctor for referral as usual. You will be given two slips : one for the sports check up and the other for urine test.

Be sure that your urine test slip have the code ‘1OU’. With this code, your urine test will be free. Or else, you’d be required to pay an additional 16 euro on top of 50 euro for the sports doctor visit.

Anyway, when I got the results back, I was alarmed to see that the haemoglobin and red blood cell levels in my sample were much higher compared to the one last year.

When I showed this at the sports doctor last Wednesday, she gave a quick glance and said, “There is blood in your urine“. And asked me do do another pee test after doing the ECG and the Spirometry test.

Imagine my shock and horror, to find out that there is blood in my urine. I mean, it looks normal to my naked eye, but apparently not, according to the data analysis.

I learnt later that a high level of haemoglobin and red blood cells in urine could be affected by women having their menstrual cycle. It is also common for long distance runners to have it as they stress their body and cause the haemoglobin and red blood cells to increase. It might also be an indication of cancer. I really hope that I don’t have cancer.

All throughout the weekend, I kept thinking that there is a possibility that I might not be able to participate in the marathon after all. I’m actually okay with it. If the doctor says that I am not fit enough to participate, I wont. But I’d feel like I’m giving up on my goal and in a way, that’ll make me feel like a defeatist.

So imagine my relief when I reached the hospital this morning and found out that the second urine test went well, which means that I finally got my sports certification. I’m good to go!

As excited as I am, I have to be honest though, I do feel nervous as in a couple of weeks my training will go beyond the half marathon mark. Further than I’ve ever been before. But step by step … we’ll get there.

6 weeks done, another 10 more weeks to go before #rinazdoes42km!