somebody put me together....

In spite of seven hours sleep and no alcohol, I woke up this morning feeling as though I'd been hit by a truck: every muscle ached.... even my eyes seemed to be lumpy and tired.  This is bad on an ordinary day, but on a Tuesday it somehow seems so much worse.  As well as being the day when I usually do my weekly injection, something that generally leaves me feeling more fatigued than normal the next day, I also had some interval running planned for lunchtime.

Clearly I wasn't going to cancel my run, even if I was hardly looking forward to it.  Strange though I know it sounds, exercise often helps to ease the fatigue.  I took one of my pep pills at about 9am and got on with my day, planning to go running at about 12:30. 

By about 1pm, it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to find enough time to get out for a run.  I started to eat my lunch and immediately began to feel less fatigued.  Perhaps it was because I'd postponed my run and could now put it out of my mind (runs can often be exhausting to even think about, nevermind to do), but more likely it was simply because of the sudden increase in my blood-sugar levels.  I have no idea how this fatigue thing works.  It's probably different for everyone, but I haven't really been able to work out when I am going to be affected and when I'm not.  The post-injection tiredness I know about, although even that doesn't happen every week, and I also know that drinking too much can also sometimes (but not every time) increase my fatigue/tingling the next day too.  But it also looks very much to me as though if I have a long weekend or a really busy couple of days, then the fatigue really hits me a couple of days later.  I think that's what is happening now: a fantastic, long weekend with friends is really catching up with me.

Although, if that's true, then I have absolutely no idea why eating should make me feel so much better so quickly.  What's that got to do with MS? Still, I picked up very quickly and maintained my energy levels long enough to go out running when I got home at about 7.30pm.  It was raining, but was otherwise a beautiful night.  I didn't risk running intervals -- still nervous of getting too tired -- but I actually ran reasonably quickly anyway, clocking in at an average of 8.32 min/miles for the 4.19 mile of my run.  What I'm especially pleased about is the fact that miles 3 and 4 were the quickest of my whole run.... peaking at 8.15 min/mile on the darkside of the Embankment.  That's nearly as fast as I've been running my quicker intervals.  It was hard work, but the results are very pleasing.  I still stabbed a nerve as I injected, but all in all a decent end to the day.

I've been moaning a lot recently about how fatigued I'm feeling.  Well, I have been feeling tired, and there's not much anyone can do about that.  What timing my runs like this gives me is concrete evidence that I'm not completely falling to pieces. 

Yay!