Chafing, that is… very serious business.
But, before I get to that. First: the runs.
A fairly average performance on Thursday. The weekday runs are beginning to wear on me. I enjoyed them when they were 30 minutes. When it moved to 40 minutes, I felt the strain. With Monday’s 50 minute run it started to get to be a bit like “uh, this sucks” which is not how I want to feel about running. However, I only have 3 more weeks of training and then it’s the week of the big event so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Saturday’s run:
I have to admit to something here: I didn’t feel as strong on this run as I usually do. It could have been a number of things. One, I just added cross training in this past week. I know I should have been doing it all along but something always came up and so I haven’t. Adding it in likely put some extra strain on my body this week and tired me out more.
Second, the temperature rose by 11 degrees while I was out. Whenever I experience that, it just seems like my heart rate gets crazy hectic and I did battle keeping my heart rate in the specified zone for a lot of the run.
My legs may not have felt as strong as I wanted them to but I did manage to pull off some negative splits at the end which is nice.
And finally… the serious business. I’d been wondering if I would have an experience with chafing or not. I mean, everyone said when they started running longer than an hour is when they dealt with it. This week’s long run took me 1 hour and 26 minutes (not including the 5 min walk at start and finish). When I finished, I initially thought the only place I’d chafed was on my arm from the arm band of my zune. It was so horribly painful and I ended up wearing the arm band on my forearm (rather haphazardly as I was loathe to stop to fix it).
That, however, was NOT the only place I chafed. After I stopped running I noticed another discomfort. When I got home and started tinkering around with stretching and then eating I noticed it also. However, it wasn’t until I decided to shower that I knew for sure: my butt crack chafed.
Holy hell does that hurt!
Needless to say, I went out Saturday afternoon to buy some body glide. It’s time and I don’t intend on going out again without it. No way. I’m totally not going through this discomfort again if I can help it!
October 11, 2010
shrinkingirl
The Incredible Shrinking Girl 
2 responses to “Very Serious Business”
Josie
October 11th, 2010 at 08:07
Let me know if the Body Glide works for you! I experienced chafing for the first time after I reached 9 miles. And I didn’t even notice it until I got home and got ready for a shower and took my bra off. My skin was ON FIRE underneath my “girls”. It hurt SOOO bad. So I bought Body Glide and used it for my next long run a week later, yet the same thing happened. I don’t know if I got the wrong kind or used it the wrong way (which I think is impossible) but it just didn’t prevent it for me.
Your butt crack? I am sorry, but that’s funny. Painful I bet, but funny too. Who would have ever thought?
shrinkingirl
October 11th, 2010 at 09:15
OMG, it is funny AND painful…trust me, I don’t wish it on anyone!
I have to admit, my ignorance of anti-chafing products shows through here because – when I opened up the deodorant stick of body glide and attempted to apply it to my arm I was like… “oh… this is so not going to happen for my butt crack.”
I just had to order some different stuff from amazon.com as body glide was the ONLY brand the local stores sold and I can honestly say I wasn’t impressed with it on my run today…was thinking maybe I didn’t apply enough? Who knows?