Saturday, June 12, 2010

A Matter of Life

I had a Green Monster this morning for breakfast. I did not like the addition of cantaloupe to it. May have to eat that on the side from now on. AND I need to eat more than just a GM. I was hungry before we even started! The fabulous sitter got to the house and off I went!

I showed up at the store and my friend Speedy Liz said I look like the girl showing up for the first day at a new school! LOL I did have a bit of a terrified look on my face. We did a little run down on the basics of the program and split into groups, but not before I "borrowed" a cran-apple GU Chomp to get rid of the growl my stomach was making. I went into the "endurance" group which is people OK running 3 comfortably (then there's me). We are the ones building up our miles and not so much working on speed. The "speed" group starts out at 5 miles and has a speed component to each run. I wish I was there but I like my little novice group.

We did a little warm up half mile to the fence in the park where we did our plyos and talked about our scheduled run when one of the Speed group runners came over (they were about 100yds out in a different location) saying they had a medical emergency and looking for medical personnel. Susan took off to take care of things and make the 911 call. It was very shortly after that the ambulance (the same company FFP and I used to work for and the owner of the company is actually in my running group) showed up. Apparently a member of the speed group had a heart attack and lost consciousness. One thing led to another and CPR was preformed. (I didn't know all this until later this afternoon). I said a little prayer as I passed the ambulance that who ever was hurt would be OK. I'm sure his wife and so many others including myself where thankful that he was not out running alone. He is now at the hospital in stable condition waiting on a quadruple bypass. Our coaches and runners were prepared by having CPR training. It literally saved his life.


We went on (and the speed group did too thanks to wonderful leadership) to finish our workout. We did 1.5 miles out then back. They were timing us at the 1 mile mark so we could see what our pace was. Lu and I came in at 9:57pace. The next two miles were not that good. Mile 2= 10:18pace. Mile 3=10:31pace. I was DYING at the end. With a total of 3.5 miles under my belt it was mostly like my brain and my body were at odds the entire time and then it was my legs vs. lungs at the end when it was hard to breath even at that 10:30 pace. I'm hoping that the closet treadmill running I've been doing will keep me moving forward.

Have you ever stumbled on an emergency (or been in one yourself) when out for a run? What do you do? I think I should take my HUGE phone from now on and get to buying a Road ID ASAP.

1 comment:

Steven Cohen said...

That would certainly be scary! I don't have a group, but stopped carrying my phone a long time ago. I do have Road ID though. It mostly points to my wife's phone #, so it wouldn't always get me fast help, but it's enough to notify her, anyway. Stay safe!