Warning to men: raging female hormones at work here. Feel free to step away right now before you get sucked into the brain-damaging whirlwind of a heretofore mild mannered woman who changes into a bloodthirsty werewolf at the full moon.
Still with me? Pity. What an easy target you make, my pretty…
For the past two days things have been pretty lonely/angry/frustrating in my little world. There have been many varied factors that have led up to this month’s hormone-charged rant. Most of them were out of my control and thus, I started to seethe. Have you ever seethed? It’s a pressure cooker in there and not at all comfortable. A sane female runner will often head out for a leg-pounding, heart-racing, mind-clearing tempo run that lasts as long as there is anger/frustration/yelling inside the brain. She will return if and only if she gets the coveted endorphin rush that kills the blood-boiling rage of hormones that change her teeth to fangs every 28 days. I didn’t get to run though. Therein lies the problem.
It’s really all Bill’s fault. He’s been working a zillion hours lately and comes to bed with his brain spinning. He tosses and turns at night in a wildly successful attempt at making me as miserable as he is. Fortunately I wake up with my eyes burning as if I had just hung out in a smoke-filled Denny’s pulling an all-nighter. We barely see each other anymore and talk or text only to pass messages about the kids and our scheduling conflicts. Money’s tight (as usual), my GI issues are acting up again, Colorado just got two feet of snow, school was closed for two days, it was too icy to run outside and the gym was closed. Our street wasn’t plowed, I couldn’t get the car out of the garage, Bill had our 4-wheel drive so he could make it to appointments and I was stranded at home with a nasty case of cabin fever. I’ve been bloated, achy and downing Midol at an alarming rate to kill the headache.
In my “Zen” moments I know that this too will pass, it’s all hormones, Bill is a lovely human being and this stress is hard on him too. Let’s call a spade a spade for a moment though, just for kicks. He doesn’t have the myriad of hormones racing through his delicate body every month, hormones that change from day to day, hour to hour, minute by minute as determined by what foods he’s carefully chosen or flippantly ingested. He doesn’t stand in the closet contemplating what shirt to wear by what time of the month it is or how bloated his belly appears at 7 in the morning. He doesn’t groan at the snail’s pace he just ran because he was so constipated by a week’s worth of PMS, or have to pull his favorite stinky sports bra out of the laundry because that’s the only one that will mash his boobs to his rib cage so the sore little trinkets don’t bounce while he’s desperately trying to achieve that endorphin rush so that his bowels loosen, his pants will fit and he’ll feel like kissing his spouse good-morning after a crappy night’s sleep and stepping in cat puke on the way to the bathroom at the crack of dawn.
Sometimes I wonder how women can even function with the ever-changing hormones we have to deal with. Running is a constant in so many people’s lives (MINE! MINE! MINE!) and it’s just brutally cruel to think one week that I’m actually getting stronger and making progress in my form only to ovulate and not be able to stand up straight or do trail runs because it jiggles the innards too much. So I back off for a few days and then my training schedule is shot and then I get “Runner’s Magazine” in the mail and there on the cover is a photo of a svelte, smiling woman reminding me why I adore running, especially trail running, and so in my eagerness to get out there I set a goal for myself to start training for a race. I sit in front of my computer and find a race, register, and then realize that GOD DAMMIT, the race is going to fall exactly on, or slightly before, my period, which means that I’m going to be feeling like absolute SHIT and it’s not going to be a very good race. Excellent. The only thing for it is to rally a whole bunch of friends, have THEM register as well, and then we’ll all go out and run the stupid race together, have an absolute blast, and then go get coffee afterward which is the icing on the cake anyway.
Do you know what I’m doing tomorrow? That’s right, folks, I’m running the Eerie Erie 10K Halloween race tomorrow morning. With a bunch of my girlfriends. Don’t even ask me what time of the month it is or how I’m feeling. I WILL bite your head off. Did I mention I’m a werewolf?
Well said, Lara. I feel crazy That Time of the month every month without fail. Running does help a lot. I comment you for doing the Erie 10K race in spite of it all. This is such a terrible time for so many of us: Money is tight all across the board, constant bad news about the economy, etc. But we have to keep going, don’t we? Hang in there, and I’ll do the same. –C.