Don't tell me about your poopy.

I just finished reading Portnoy's Complaint (putting the oy back in goy and the id back in yid). I sure read a lot of books in my youth that twisted my worldview. I've almost got all the damage undone from these horrific books, like On the Road and 1984 and all these awful books talking about angst and discontent.

For quite a number of years I've had some minor stomach issues that I assumed were just normal. The urgent need to go to the restroom (to put it politely) was a matter of routine. Sometimes not for months and then other times it seemed like constant. So I talked to the doctor and he put me through my paces, taking a good look under the hood, as they say. And everything turned up negative. Then Coach was watching Lifetime or some other awful channel and they had a whole tragic show about this woman who couldn't go anywhere without having to "go." I wasn't quite that extreme, but it could be somewhat stressful to worry about having to "go" in embarrassing situations and I have a number of recollections of having to discretely excuse myself to race home before tragedy happened.

To make a long story short, the cure to this disorder is to a cholesterol medicine which makes the gall bladder release less bile. So far so good. They called it "habba sydrome" like this Habba guy discovered it or something.

One reason I mention this is because the stories of marathon runners with diarrhea running down their legs are legendary and I have often been worried that I would have a disaster like this happen. So far I've been pretty lucky on most of my races actually.

As I was running my 17 miles today, I was thinking about the whole carb-loading stuff. I had a normal meal last night and ran just fine today. I can't think of a better way to mess with your stomach than to get on special diets and then "carb load" during training. The longer I participate in marathons and triathlons, the more I think maybe special diets and drinks are mostly marketing. For any race under four hours, so cool ade is about as good as anything. Of course, I'm a gatorade man. But for a marathon, in the past I was eating gu's and all this other stuff, but I think just a sugary drink will get me to the end just as well.

My 17 mile run last week was about 3:30, and this week I ran the same distance because I had a tough time last week, so I ran 17 miles this week in about 3 hours. Those times include a 1 mile walk at then so the total distance is really 18 miles.

Next weekend I'll be in Colorado Springs where I'll put in an 18 miles run. My in-laws know of good places to go so we'll see how that goes.