side-stitches-heat-training-block

Yesterday's long run turned into a fight. Side stitches took over for the final 6 miles, and I had to work for every one of them.

Conditions: 76°F at the gun, 92% humidity, dew point 72°. That's heat index territory before the sun's even fully up.

A side stitch is a sharp cramp under your ribs, usually from your diaphragm spasming. GI distress, breathing pattern, and heat stress all make it worse — and yesterday had all three working against me.

Here's the part most people don't think about: in heat, your body reroutes blood flow. It goes to your legs to keep oxygen moving, and to your skin to help you cool down. Digestion isn't a priority when your body's fighting to keep you upright in that kind of heat. Blood flow to the gut gets shorted, and absorption suffers — no matter how good your fueling plan looks on paper.

My race target is 90g of carbs per hour. That's what I need my gut trained to handle by Chicago. Heat makes that job a lot harder, and yesterday proved it.

Add in the 4th of July the night before — rib-eye, ice cream, up late with family — and I knew this morning was going to be a different kind of push. High fat slows gastric emptying, which was one more thing competing for blood flow my gut didn't have to spare.

I love living life. Treats, trying new foods, enjoying time with people I care about — I'm not giving that up for training. I'm usually pretty conscious around effort days, but not for the 4th. Sometimes there's a price to pay the next morning for a big effort, and that's a trade I'll make every time.

Without my crew out there yesterday, I probably let the side stitches win. Instead, it turned into one of the best fitness-building workouts of this block — in the heat, under real conditions, exactly the kind of stress I need my body adapting to before Chicago.