Yuck. And yuck.

Excuse my continued absence. I am under the weather, yet again. Our entire house has been exchanging a cold bug over the past two weeks. It started with Beanie, then on to Liam, then over to Grandma then back to Sawyer and then to Daddy and on to me. I normally don't get colds and I find this one particularly annoying. Sunday I woke up with a touch of a sore throat (the cold had been trying to affix itself to my person for several days prior) but nothing too bad. Enter "the Freaky long Run"...

Sunday I met up with my coach and some other speedy ladies for a nice 15 mile run. Normally I eat very little pre-run due to my inability to tolerate anything in my gut/GI tract but that day, since we were meeting at 1:00 I figured I had better eat. I had peanut butter on oat bread two hours prior to the run. About half way in I noticed my stomach was protesting, followed by some unkind words from my intestines. We stopped for a quick refuel and I ran into the bathroom and felt a bit better. We started back up again and as the run progressed, my stomach felt worse. We finished up and as I was going to my car I just felt "off". I drove on over to the grocery store to pick up a few items that Ken needed for a dinner party we were going to that night and as I stood in the aisle looking for "Smoked paprika" I felt my skin crawl. My neck and face began to itch like crazy and I could literally feel the hives erupting. I started to scratch and scratch and I thought I might throw up. It was all I could do to not pass out in the Whole Foods spice aisle. I paid, got into my car and my stomach started to cramp so bad I wasn't sure I could drive home.

But I did. I ran inside and went upstairs got sick and proceeded to feel really, really lousy for about an hour. My eyes even had welts. A physician friend of ours was at dinner that night (yes, I still went to the dinner party--it was Med night!) and he thought it sounded like an exercise-induced food allergy. I have had it happen one other time before (not nearly that bad) but I cannot for the life of me remember if I had eaten anything before. Apparently cold weather, intense exercise and sometimes ibuprofen combined with the trigger food can cause a reaction. All I know is I am going to go back to eating very little pre-long run. I feel really, really bad for anyone who has to deal with food allergies (or any allergies for that matter) on a regular basis.

So today, three days later I feel pretty crusty. The allergic reaction "episode" drained me of all energy and now my cold is being a jerk. Hopefully today will be the worst of it and I can quit complaining already.