At first I though it was strawberry jam on the towel in the morning after my shower. What the…. Where did THAT come from? Of course I had to fool with it some; yup, it was a little tiny hunk of jam. Wait, no, did it come from me, because allergies (and sinus, and dry nose, and whatever) are working full-on as everything is blooming? Whoa, there was a little blood. This isn’t good (panic setting it). OK, what possible thing causes that ….running rapidly through my memory list of lung diseases. How is this possible; I’ve never had anything wrong with my lungs in my life, in fact I’ve hardly ever had anything wrong, period. I’m in amazing shape for an OLD guy, and I’ve had every chance to catch every disease that exists and hardly ever caught anything. Besides, my dad lived to 102 years old….. so what the hell was going on?
Wait a minute, now, I remember: I had a longer-than-normal, and kind of hard, bike workout on the trainer yesterday afternoon and then, a GREAT IDEA, a brick! [short run-my-brains-out off the bike] Annnndd, didn’t drink much at all, the day was the first really warm day we’d had in a while. After remembering all that I scrambled around on the Intertubes for about half an hour and found that the taste of blood in the mouth or a cough of blood happens to many endurance athletes when really pushing the envelope. That pretty much matched my brilliant venture yesterday.
It was the first time since my hip replacement six months ago, using my newly found “low-impact-shuffle-at-run-pace”, that I’d pushed the Power Button while running outside on the street. You know that place where you think you just can’t go more and your brain kind of scrambles for a minute and then you get through it and go more? Well that was the first time I’d done that with Feet On The Street Low Impact Running since the new hip. For a complete high heart rate it’s been really hard to get to that same place with elliptical, arc swing, pool running, etc. So it was good to kind of clean out the tubes with sneakers on asphalt. Nice high heart rate, lungs working hard and probably into anerobic territory; felt quite satisfying.
So I found out that taste of blood isn’t that unusual and the recommendtions are First, to back off the intensity for a little bit (this is a rest day anyway). Next, to make sure you’ve got enough iron (probably fine there), and and Finally, to DRINK MORE DAMN WATER during a hot day! Yup, it was the first warm day we’ve really had and I never even thought about it. Allrighty, consider that done as of right now. It’s just one darn surprise after another when you’re trying to get back to where you were before, six months ago, before you broke some bones ‘n stuff. Just can’t keep that trying harder thing in its place and I really do enjoy being healthy, feeling good, and heading toward raceland again.
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