2 Miles in the Clear Cool Morning

I ran this morning for the first time since Bell's Palsy began. The weather was lovely - it seems that the summer heat has for the most part abated for a few mornings each week - just the development I've been waiting for!

I went out for 20 minutes, just to test the waters. I had a little trouble - I think my heart rate was rather high, my rate of perceived exertion was certainly high, but I made it.

Felt like I might toss my cookies when I started walking after the 20 minutes, but didn't, probably because there was nothing in my stomach to toss. Cooled down rather quickly, though, and felt great from the endorphins afterwards.

Here is the deal: I've started another blog for Bell's Palsy. In running around on the Internet I've not been able to discover an actual day to day account of anyone dealing with BP, and I feel like such an account would help me, so I'm going to document the ins and outs of life with BP for as long as I happen to have it. That also means that this blog can return to the ins and outs of me trying to be a runner. Despite the DNS for the Bellaire Fall Fever 5K this past Saturday, my goal remains the Run Thru the Woods 5 Miler on Thanksgiving Day. It might take me a week or two to return to form after this temporary weakness, but I have every intention of doing so asap, so with this post, it'll be back to the regularly scheduled blogging.

Btw, I've lost about 4 pounds since the BP started one week ago. This makes me 3.5 pounds over my dream goal weight. This is not how I wanted to get there, but I can't help that right now. The other night I was watching a program "The Science of Lance Armstrong" that mentioned how the weight loss from Armstrong's cancer allowed him to come back to cycling 20 pounds lighter and thus with a higher power to weight ratio. I want to make BP (while recognizing that however traumatic it is - it is nothing in the face of cancer) my own equivalent: this isn't how I wanted to take the weight off, but since it is off, the goal will be to keep it off even as I recover and to simply train my body at this new weight. I am back to eating solid foods, albeit slowly, so hopefully the weight will stop drastically dropping now and we will be back to our regularly scheduled weight loss programming as well.

On tap for the rest of the week: Tae Bo tomorrow morning, Run 25 minutes Thursday morning, Bike on Friday, Run again either Saturday or Sunday with the other day off - shooting for a full 30 minutes that day. Then next week we'll take stock of the situation and proceed.