Snotcicles and Lego hands

Exactly one year ago today I was a miserable, envious runner in rehab. Today, I was just an ice-cold runner … and maybe a tad bit miserable!

So the incident to make me so miserable last year actually happened two weeks prior to this date when I went and ran a practice run of the Historic Half race route (19 km of it at least). I’d been having a lot of hip and knee issues leading up to this run, and not even 10 km in my knees were screaming at me, at 16 km, they full-on quit. I had to walk the remaining three in, trying with all my might not to shed a tear. They could have the F bombs, but I would not relinquish a tear, not one … or so I thought. The half hour drive home was filled with tears. Two weeks later, while several of my running chicks were racing a race I should have been racing, I was at home embittered with ice on my knee.

Fast forward a year and look me at now. I completed my first full marathon eight months after bowing out of that race, and am now a good five weeks in to training for my second. I’ve also got a half marathon lined up for when I visit the Onterrible this spring, and am contemplating adding a 10 km race somewhere in the mix as well. Yes, I still have issues, most notably my ankle, but for now, I’m loving my runs. So what’s changed? I’m listening to my own body, and NOT to what others who don’t live in my body think my body should be. Oh how things do change 😀

TODAY’S RUN

• 8 a.m. BG before: 14.4 (YIKES!)
• BG correction: (I gave myself a slight correction of 0.30 units … not like it did much though)
• Temp basal: -50 per cent
• Distance: 16 km (lsd)
• Average pace: 7:13 min/km
• Average heart rate: 152 bpm
• Time: 1:55:30
• @45 minutes: GU gel
• 11 a.m. BG after: 16.0 (Seriously?)

Today’s run, however, well I’m thinking it’s probably NOT one I’d put in my all-time highs. It was freaking cold! Miserable cold! Winterpeg cold! We ran into a head wind for about 12 of the 16 km, and it was a brutal, nasty, ice-cold head wind. Just check out my pony tail blowing in the wind:

My face was frozen, my eyes were frozen, my lips were frozen, my hands were frozen. I couldn’t speak properly. The snot in my nose became snotcicles. I even got brain freeze, you know the kind you get after drinking a slushie too fast? That’s what I had. But the worst were my hands. They were so cold, they had seriously froze into the Lego people hands! I kid you not, when I waved at cars thanking them for moving over, my hands wouldn’t straighten, not even a smidge, it was full-on Lego hands! And then when Carol tried putting her gloves over my gloves to help warm my hands up, they weren’t exactly cooperating.

How do you stay warm while running in the cold?

The weather wasn’t the only thing acting up, my blood sugars were too as you might have noticed. The other day I changed my infusion thinking that’s what was causing my recent stint of high blood sugars, and I still do believe that was a cause, as my blood sugars have leveled right out over night, but I am still having daytime issues, and then combine that with screwing up my morning bolus, and I’m right back out of whack all over again. The issues this morning: new raison toast with different carb counts and increasing my I:C ratio a little too high and not inputting a bolus for the half banana I had. Small things, but when you add them together, horrendous results:

PRE-RUN BREAKFAST:

• 6 a.m. BG: 7.4
• I:C ratio: 1:24
• Raison toast: 42g (should have been 46g)
• Peanut butter: 0g
• 1/2 banana: 0g (should have been 8g)
• 1/2 cup smoothie: 15g
• Total carbs: 57g
  
• Total bolus: 2.35 units (no BG correction)
  

Lesson learned.