Lesson Learned

At the newbie stage, or for me anyway, running has so many ups and downs. There are days when I feel really good both during and post run. Ok, there have only been a few of those thus far, but now that those times have happened, I know they exist and look forward to them happening more often. Most days are just normal-- no real over the top excitement, but nothing horrible either. Then there are the bad days. Yesterday was a bad day. 

I'd taken an extra day off to give a leg muscle some rest. That meant yesterday would mark the 3rd day I'd gone without running since starting about 10 weeks ago. It was important to me to run because I was concerned that taking more time off would only make running again more difficult. (If you're male you're not going to relate to the following so feel free to stop reading now.) Then I woke up yesterday  with cramps and a nasty little headache. I spent all of yesterday taking Advil and trying everything I could think of to relieve the headache. I iced my head, I applied heat, I drank water, I tried green tea, I stood under hot water in the shower-- nothing brought relief. Evening came and it was time to run. What to do?

On a day like that I would normally do nothing. Normally, I would lay down somewhere and wait out the pain, but yesterday was the 3rd day off and I was a little weirded out. My thought process was this-- I'm already in pain. This day has already sucked. The worst thing that will happen is I'll collapse in pain or I'll throw up or both. I also had a strange thought that maybe the exertion would somehow help with either the cramps or the headache.

Here's what happened and what I now know-- Under those conditions I can run, very slowly,  for 30 minutes but can not run for 3 miles. Running does, in the moment, relieve cramps, but does not help with a headache. I didn't collapse in pain or toss my cookies, but by the time I finished I felt like I might do both and my head might blow off of my neck. It really was pretty awful. So, lesson learned. Do not try to push through a headache. You may be able to run but its not going to be worth it. I should have taken an extra day and when I ran again just cut myself some slack. Anyway, now I know.