A stitch in time

What is a stitch? Painful? Yes. Annoying? Yes. Pointless? Yes! I spent the whole of training today with a pesty little blighter that gained its painful, torturous enjoyment from working its way around the vicinity of my abdomen... Very unfair I think!

A running Stitch!

As it moved itself from left, to right, back to left again... refusing to budge despite my implementation of all the different ways I've heard you can rid yourself of a stitch... I was wondering why it had decided to plague me today. Was I breathing wrong? Did I eat my porridge too late? Was it really appendicitis? Well, I was looking for excuses to stop running with it by this point! Having spent 40 minutes with this affliction, it is obviously still on my mind now I have returned home, so I have done the obvious thing... I have googled it! Many different sites obviously appear with this, so if you too are interested in knowing what causes a stitch and how (apparently) to cure yourself of the dreaded affliction, I have found out from 'Sportsinjury.com' that: they are common amongst camel riders(!) as well as a host of other athletes;  they can stop even the toughest athelete (that would be me of course!); scientists are at a loss as to what causes them or how to prevent them - oh!

Despite this, it does then go on to suggest many reasons they may occur - I very likely did eat my porridge too late -  and a HUGE number of ways in which they may be prevented. So not at a complete loss then Mr Scientist?!

Well, I've not discussed stitches for nothing... I have now established a convenient excuse as to why I didn't run as fast as I could have in the club training session! Yep... convenient! Although saying that, I also didn't run as slow as I thought I was at the time. The session was speed intervals of 1 min fast, followed by 1 min recovery jog, 2 mins fast, followed by 2 mins recovery, then... yep, you've guessed it... 3 mins fast, followed by recovery of the same time. REPEAT...

I know, little chimp... that's how I felt!  Still... you'd be forgiven for thinking I'm moaning, and I'm not, honestly! Despite the stictch, it felt good to run fast (it's been a while with all the ice about) and it'll be really good preparation for the Stockport 10 on Sunday. And look... I actually didn't do as bad as it felt at the time, those fast intervals were actually quite fast for me... the garmin never lies:

Oooh... nearly forgot as well. I've done it! I've signed up to the Janathon challenge (hence the logo on the left). You see Diane, you really have inspired me! In case you are not au fait with what this is, the challenge is to run (or exercise) every day of January; I figure this will be the perfect way to help me raise my mileage in this unforgiving month. And it sounds like fun!

Distance: 3.94
Weather: Positively balmy at 6 celcius!
Feeling: Speedy, but in pain!