DEFCON 3

The blood in my pee resolved itself so quickly yesterday that I assumed it was a one-off, something to do with a long run at the end of a long, hard week. But as I was running today - just a light aerobic run of an hour - I sensed that something was not quite right and refrained from peeing on route, just in case. Back at the gym, my fears were confirmed as exactly the same thing happened, bright red just as it was yesterday.

The concern is that my kidneys are not working properly for some reason or that I have internal bleeding from a muscle tear. Although from what I have managed to ascertain grubbing around on the Internet, Exercise Induced Hematuria (EIH) is fairly common, there could be a more sinister underlying cause. In any case, I don't think it is particularly conducive to my Marathon preparation to be throwing away all those hard earned red blood cells.

I'm in the hospital right now doing a series of blood and urine tests. Hopefully they will be able to figure out the cause and advise accordingly. The doctor who attended me looks like a fellow Marathon runner and he was certainly sympathetic to my desire to get back to the trails. In fact, when he asked me which Marathon I was running he seemed to be consulting a calendar in his head. I asked him if he was a runner and he said yes. He asked me - if it were no indiscretion - what my time was and he looked genuinely impressed. I suppose I spend so much time with other, much faster runners that I forget that it is pretty fast and would have even seemed so to me a year or two ago. If I am honest, I'd been looking for an excuse to back off a bit on the training, even half wishing for a dose of gastroenteritis. But when the doctor wished me luck I remembered my goal. Tomorrow I have an appointment with the urologist, so we'll see if they spot anything because, so far, everything is normal. I just hope that is a good sign.

More soon....