Science is my life.

Some times I wish I wasn't a scientist. I view my life as one experiment after another.  Here is case in point:

So before my son, I was a caffeine addict.  I also had horrible insomnia at night, so I would sleep from like 2 or 3 am till around 8 am, and then get up and have to drink tons of caffeine, usually in the form of diet soda or tea.  I would feel buzzed for hours and it felt GREAT! I even would drink a decaffeinate soda with dinner.  Wow.  Anyway when I got preggers or found out I was preggers, I cut it all out to about 1 cup of either coffee or half a soda a day and water, water, water.  Big difference.  Post breast feeding and getting back to normal (or whatever normal is now LOL), I slowly have moved more caffeine back in my life, but more in the form of black coffee.  I noticed a big difference in that instead of that buzzed feeling I use to get, I feel sleepy when I have too much caffeine, almost worn down and fatigued like you would feel right before you started your period.  

Okay, now rewind back to last week.  I had been using a Nuun product that was an all day hydration tablet, in order to get more water in during the day (I drink most of my water when I get home at night, and then am up all night peeing).  Well, I got a huge sample of the all day product at the Chicago marathon and ran out.  I went to the running store here, and the only version they had of the all day hydration product was the one that has caffeine in it called the energy version.  I bought that to keep up with my all day water drinking habit.  Well, honestly, even though it has about half the amount of caffeine in it than a cup of coffee, between my half a cup in the morning and my half of a tea at lunch, I think I was over caffeintating.  Not that I was feeling like I was sick,but I was over buzzed.  This weekend, I just did regular Nuun for my morning hydration and also today. I have felt totally fine.  

Also take my whole shin/ankle issue.  I had moved from my Nike Vomero's to a more cushioned shoe, the Sacouny triumphs.  I also added in strength training two days a week.  Well, while reading another blogger's blog, she mentioned an article about shin injuries and how to over come them.  I was very interested in the part about the misconception being, if you have this issue to move to a more cushioned shoe (something I did).  I had bought some Kinvaras on a sale rack, hoping to move them into rotation as speed work shoes.  I had decided not to use them till after the marathon, so I wasn't changing anything.  When I read this article from Runner's Connect via The Hungry Runner Girl's blog, the red flashing lights flashed and warning bells sounded.  What if this is the one variable i could change, and easily change at that to help my shin issues?  I immediately got my kinvaras out (I had been wearing them as an every day shoe) and started using them for running instead.  I did my trail race with them and my recovery run the next day.  I also did my 5 miles with interspersed fartleks in them yesterday.  I have had ZERO pain since changing to them.  Now i know I need more than a few days to really make a conclusion, but the fact that I had gone from being in some sort of pain pretty much all day every day to ZERO pain, even after a trail race is amazing!!!!  

So there, experiment after experiment.  Yeesh.  Now to figure out why deuce's allergies have returned YET again!  Sigh!