After twelve weeks of intensive marathon training, I was in the best shape of my life. I had been training knowing full well that I was going to be needing a surgical intervention. In just eight days in the hospital, I saw my hard-earned fitness evaporate (along with fifteen pounds). We've been told how quickly fitness declines with injury or being sidelined, but that isn't the whole story. Tra...

Those of us with an autoimmune disorder, like Crohn’s disease, are in a constant state of managing inflammation and dealing with the systemic disruption and damage that can happen when inflammation gets out of control. Long cycles of endurance training can exacerbate inflammation, with symptoms and impact similar to what we see with autoimmunity, making continual training more difficult and inc...

“I’m pretty sure I won my age group!”, I pronounced as my fellow Fleet Feet runners and I sat down at the Big Sur River Inn for lunch. What would normally follow is a round of cheers, but today my declaration brought laughs all the way around. Rewind about two-and-a-half hours to Andrew Molera State Park, where hundreds of trail runners gathered in the rain at the start of the Big Sur Trail Hal...

This week saw the transition from summer to fall and the end of my training for the Big Sur Trail Half Marathon. All that’s left to do is keep things moving, do a lot of deep recovery, and prep for the big race on Saturday. Earlier this week, I wrote about how this time of year catches me bracing for something to go wrong with my health. In the 11 years since I was diagnosed, pretty much every ...

Last week, I had a forced down week thanks to the flu, leaving me curious about my ability to bounce back. Recovering from illness with Crohn's Disease is usually a slow process, often accompanied by lingering fatigue and related symptoms. This was the first time I’d been sick since moving from a colostomy (large intestine) to an ileostomy (small intestine) and while my disease has been in deep...

“A wiser fella once said, sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, the bar eats you” - The Stranger, Big Lebowski My week started with a Remicade infusion — a medication called a TNFa inhibitor that blocks my body from responding to the tumor necrosis factor alpha protein that is used to affect inflammation events — and was poorly timed with having spent the weekend taking care of one of...

Having spent 3 weeks building distance, time, and effort (and having that pay off in a race), this week was a "down" week with lower mileage and more recovery — but was it? My overall training load (TL) was actually higher (777 vs 758 last week) because the Vuelta a España started and I had to get some miles in on the bike. Let's dive in. Catch up with my half-marathon training and mentoring: ...

August has been the busiest month of *daily life* since I started dealing with Crohn's disease over a decade ago. This week, despite ending with a race, felt *relatively easy*. Catch up with my half-marathon training and mentoring: read week 1 & week 2. Coros Half Marathon Training Training this week went a bit smoother with the other obligations of the market and mentoring. I opted to run on...