I had a bit of a rough run yesterday. It started out well enough, I was shooting for a 7.2 at around 8 minutes per mile. Four miles in I was at 32 minutes and some change, had just completed a 7:40 mile and was feeling like I could run forever. Breathing was great, stride was long and easy, then I got a side stitch just past five miles. Tried to belch, nope. Tried to stretch (while running of course), nope. Tried the deep belly breathing – and that finally brought some relief, but doing it was way too distracting. I crawled back for the last two miles in something like 17 minutes… It sucked (I know, it’s still 8:30 miles while dealing with a crappy stitch, but I had a hankerin’ to move, baby). I’ve bumped up my average mileage quite bit compared to last summer’s high water mark, and I’m finding myself a little bit on the tired side so I’m at a point where I have to decide between putting in miles or cutting back and pushing harder to work on speed. So far, more miles is winning. Fortunately the forecast is for rain tomorrow so I’ll be taking a much-needed day off for some rest.
The rest of the day yesterday was devoted to grass cutting and bike maintenance – I cleaned up the road bike and took apart the pulleys on the rear derailleur of the mountain bike and cleaned them up – unlike a road bike that rarely sees dust, let alone dirt, the pulleys had a lot of gunk built up… Now all’s I’ve got left to mess with is a new crank/bottom bracket and the goat will be 100% again.
I’ll be heading out on an 18 16 mile ride today but I’ll be taking it easy going all out for most of it, [I don’t care if] the legs are a little heavy after my run yesterday [I just feel like giving it some speed, get the lungs going]. In Endomondo news, I signed up for a new National Cycling challenge – they’re going by a point system on this one, and out of 290 riders that have signed up so far, I’m in eighth place with 171 points… Just wait till I start hitting the bricks again next Saturday (running adds points too!). For my other cycling challenge I’m still hovering around 570th place out of 19,800.
UPDATE: Well, things being what they are, I got my second foot clipped into my pedal and that’s all it took for me to decide that a recovery ride just wasn’t going to get it today. I edited my post to match what I actually did. First 9 miles at 20 mph average, with a 19 mph average in the end. It was just too nice out – I couldn’t contain myself. I cut two miles off so that my wife could make my sister’s wedding shower.
Congratulations, Kate. I’m incredibly happy for you.
Fit Recovery 
Stitches are the worst. The cause is a problem too – sometimes it is due to dehydration. Other times from drinking too much too quickly. I have found exhaling hard puffs when your foot strikes on the side of the stitch helps. Good run though – you know I dream to run your crawl pace!
I wished for the same thing last year, and I spent 10 years as a runner only hitting the low 8’s a couple of times. I wish there were some magical trick, if you do “X”, you’ll run fast. Truth be told, I lucked out. I think there are a lot of factors that have to work out just right to see that kind of improvement without a coach.
For my stitch, I ate a peanut butter granola bar on the way down (still hungry after breakfast), I think that did me in.
I never get a stitch cycling, but often get stitches running. I think it must be to do with impact / compression of internal organs, because if it was purely to do with food / drink consumption you’d surely get them while cycling too?
Last time I got one it felt like I was completely winded and I could hardly breathe. Annoying.
There’s three different stitches I’ve been able to identify – one is trapped gas below the lungs (burp gas), another has to do with the tendons that attach to the diaphragm cramping which is generally due to shallow breathing and the last is the impact cramp. I mostly get the first, though yesterday’s was a mixture of the three and it was all kinds of sucky.