Things my body has been saying and a couple things from our week

Runners are notorious for ignoring what their bodies tell them.  I'm pretty sure the reason for this is because we would like to ignore injuries.  But sometimes, body signals are not injury related and if we are paying attention those signals won't become such.  Mine has been talking to me a lot the last couple of weeks.  I haven't been listening very well and today the voice was loud enough I couldn't ignore it all any longer.  Here are a few things that I'm going to start taking to heart.

1.  Donating blood isn't awesome for athletes:

I have donated blood for years.  When my second baby was born, she was premature and required transfusions on more than one occasion to save her life.  I consider it my way of giving back to donate blood often.

Unfortunately, there are consequences to losing a pint of blood when you are athlete and it takes quite a while for your body to fully recover.  Red blood cells carry the oxygen to your muscles. I have known this for most of the time that I have been a runner and try to schedule donations during the time of year when I don't have races on the schedule.  I donated a couple of weeks ago, but the timing is still bad.  I noticed that the burn in my leg muscles were far more prominent than usual during our ride in Yellowstone.  I didn't put the puzzle pieces together until later.

2.  It's good to get a flu shot, but that has consequences too:

I'm sold on flu shots and I get one every year by the end of September.  This year was a little later than usual.  That being said, a vaccine works because it sets your body in to "fight a virus" mode and makes your body think you've already had that virus.  As a result your immune system is busy for a few days which means you can be more susceptible to other bugs going around.   Many of my coworkers are sick right now so my immune system is working double duty to ward away the boogy man.  So far it's been a success, but I'm tired and that affects my running.

3.  My nutrition is not up to par and I need a reset:

Fall is loaded with delicious comfort foods and pumpkin beer.  All day at work I eat the food I have prepared and I am on point with a healthy diet.  After 5:00, bring on the poor choices.  My body feels it and it adds to the sluggish way I feel.  I'm ready for a day of fasting to reset my eating habits.  It seems like I need to do this once a year.  Its almost as much a mental fasting as a physical fasting.

4  Finally - Good shoes are so important:

I adore my Altra Superior trail runners.  They are my favorite trail shoes and are what I ran The Rut in.  Today was the first time I have worn them since.  On my "long run" I discovered that it it definitely time to retire them.  My body ached most of the time and after less than ten miles of running and more walking than usual, I feel like a brand new runner.  Everything feels like I did in my first long runs: getting out of the truck hurt, walking down the stairs hurt, just sitting here kind of hurts.

I don't have the heart to put these in the trash.  They have well over 500 miles on them and were a key tool in the hardest race I've ever done.  They have earned a hanging on the wall in our run/ride room.

So this happened this week.......

But by the weekend, it looked like this:

That's Montana Autumn for you!

The big deal from our week......

We (and I really just mean Mitch) are proud new owners of a 2011 Ford F250.  I'm excited to see how this baby pulls the travel trailer!   The Chevy blew the transmission a couple of weeks ago and with so many other problems, it was just time to retire it.

Are you a Ford, Chevy or 'other' person?