After months of considering this, I finally experimented with the idea of waking up early to eat breakfast, going back to sleep to digest, and popping back up again for the run itself. Since my schedule yesterday was packed with a 3.5-hour run and an afternoon conference, I tried this strategy really out of desperation and necessity, but I'm a new convert. With all of my poop scares, I've been fed up with having to stop during runs and have been slowly realizing I just need to eat a lot earlier than I have been to allow more time for digestion before heading out.
I set my alarm for 5:45, ate my oatmeal, had some coffee, and got dressed. Then I promptly got right back in bed for another hour (to hour and a half) of sleep. I thought it might fill me with pre-dawn rage to have to get up any earlier than I needed to, but knowing that food and more sleep were in my immediate future, it really wasn't so bad.
I was also a bit concerned about my cup of coffee keeping me from falling back asleep, but the caffeine really didn't have enough time to be problematic. And I wanted to make sure that I had a nice coating of it in my stomach to activate the poop flow while I was asleep. And lo and behold, upon waking, I was a-ready for the poopin', handled my biz, slipped on my shoes, and was out the door. No stomach troubles. No pit stops.
Why has it taken me so long to do this?! I'll now be using the eat-sleep-run strategy every Saturday until the race. Or maybe that should be the eat-sleep-poop-run. (ESPooR? I'm into acronyms.)
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