The 12:00/Mile Allergy

So, I couldn’t hold back another week and started running today. But it was all in good measure, and maybe a little too slow to start.

Because I’m still being a weather wimp, I went to the rec. center track (besides, my membership needs to be worth its while; I have all winter to run in the cold) and warmed up with a 15-minute/1-mile walk. Not only did the walk make for a good pre-warm-up, but stretched out my feet and helped me gauge how my achey and fatted bones felt today. All good so far—even if I could feel the gravity of three days’ worth of binging!

Then I took off for a slow warm-up. I generally don’t give myself targeted times for a slow warm-up (12:00/mile today, which is 2:00/lap), but my propensity for running at too high intensity has proven uncontrollable in the past. And I just didn’t want to break my leg today.

As usual, I had poor speed control in the first half lap (I was just too excited!) before finally nailing the 12:00 pace by the end of lap two. The only problem: my legs broke out into hives! It’s been years since I’ve experienced what I assume to be slight exercise-induced anaphylaxis. My legs from thigh to calf were itchy red and slightly swollen. Thankfully I had no allergy symptoms elsewhere—running a warm-up isn’t the best time/place to get swollen air passages. Years ago I would get hives when I ran, but I always figured it was the shock on running that threw them for an allergic loop. It was their way of not-so-quietly saying, WTF?

Here I am, however, a year into doing some not-so-bad training, and I’m breaking out into hives? Argh! Lucky for us all, I’m as stubborn as they get. If a stress fracture didn’t stop me from running, how could a few blisteringly itchy hives? (Warning, kids: don’t try this idiocy at home.) I know these types of “attacks” are often related to not exercising for several days, but where was this outbreak when I took a month off in October? And most of November? My cross-training has been pretty steady all along, so I just chalk it up to the randomness and unpredictability of EIA.

Luckier still: the hives went away two laps into my second mile. After the 12:00 warm-up, I did a 3-mile set, which included three more consecutive miles at 10:00, 9:00 and 10:00 paces. I allowed myself the 9:00 miles as a reward. It had nothing to do with needing to pass other people on the track; it was just a pat on the back for being able to pace myself. Honestly! It felt great to stretch my legs and run at a comfortable pace for the first time in too long. I miss my running.

Isn’t it strange, though, that the hives disappeared almost immediately after I picked up my pace? Sure, the EIA or whatever else it was could have been burned away by my sensible warm-up run, but I think I’m really just allergic to the 12:00 mile. My body apparently just doesn’t like it (maybe it prefers stress fractures; who knows!).

Perhaps my legs were just protesting—how dare I make them run after I ate so many pastries, cakes, tarts and tortes?

When I think of the past three days, however, I realize that if nothing else I did make good on my goal of eating by color: I had my red flavanoids in red velvet cupcakes, orange in the carmelized sugar-topped dobos torte, yellow in the creamy center of an éclair, green in the holiday-colored melted chocolate drizzled on baked goods, and blue from blueberries topping a creamy orange dreamsicle cake. Taste that rainbow, baby! Sounds like a balanced diet in anti-oxidants to me. No wonder my body has become allergic to running.