Running still sucks right now.
Last week, I ran six miles. One four-miler and two runs that were supposed to be four miles, but only wound up being one. I just couldn’t go at all and found myself a mile from home disappointed and miserable. Fun times! I did manage to make it 5k this morning though which felt like a small win, but I think the only reason I was able to get myself out of bed at 5:30 was how disgusted I’ve felt with myself lately.
I still don’t know for sure what’s wrong with me, but I’ve gone to the doctor and had labs done. At my first visit, she agreed with me that everything absolutely pointed to a potassium (high) and overall electrolyte issue. It pretty much explained everything. She ordered some labs to verify and they came back totally normal on the electrolyte front. Harrumph! The interesting thing was a severely low vitamin D level. This can also explain a lot of my problems, but what it doesn’t explain is how it got there and why now? Why did this start when it was getting warmer out? It’s completely counterintuitive. Spring and summer should mean higher vitamin D due to being out in the sun more. She didn’t want to rule out any possibility of there being something else going on, but for now we’re going to work no the vitamin D and see if we can get that up and if it helps.
Another interesting thing from my labs was my testosterone was the lowest it’s ever been, 3 ng/dl. My last set of labs, just two and a half months ago had a level slightly higher than it had been over the course of the previous year. Kinda weird! Since the “normal” female range is 20-50ish, she wants to try to get me into that range. Of course, I’ve brought this up to the doctor who prescribes my hormones and she’s always stuck with not wanting to mess with it. For now, I’m going to go with the taking less spironolactone route and see if I can get it up just a little. In theory, this should have a lot of positive effects on my running, energy levels, and other areas of my physical well-being. We’ll see, I guess.
In the meantime, not running is continuing to completely destroy me emotionally. And what’s making it even worse is how much weight I’ve gained while not running. It’s been less than two months that I haven’t really been running and I’ve gained nearly ten pounds. Most of my clothes are starting to not fit. Even my running clothes aren’t fitting anymore! I feel and look gross and that’s only exacerbating my depression and overall self-loathing. Ugh!
I just feel all-around miserable right now and it’s been tough to keep it all together. More and more, after I eat anything I feel entirely disgusted with myself and just want the food back out of me. I haven’t actually done anything yet, but I do get scared at how much I think about making myself throw it up. On a conscious level, I know how awful and dangerous that is. I know that I consider throwing up to be one of the worst possible experiences ever and I typically will avoid it at all costs when I’m sick or drink too much, but sometimes it feels like that’s the only thing holding me back. Scary!
I’ve talked about this so much recently, but all of this is what happens when I can’t run. I start to completely fall apart throughout my entire life. It’s probably not healthy to rely on running so much to make my whole life work, but it typically does work and has zero side effects!