Now, many of us will have experienced the dreaded 'runner trots'. Not a topic oft spoken of but definitely one which plaques a high number of runners. My first experience of it was on the way home from my first Parkrun. I'd given a friend, who I hadn't known for that long, a lift back to her house when suddenly, sitting outside in the car, I felt like I was about to have a serious poop related accident. With most of my friends I'm pretty open about things like this but I hadn't known this lady for more than a couple of weeks so the last thing I felt like bringing to our budding friendship was "OMG I really need to empty my bowels in your house!" (We later discussed this incident and when I told her about my difficulty she said "oh wow! you know you really should have come in and pooed! It's just poo!" Good to know....) Anyway, I didn't go in, instead I drove frantically home and hid in the bathroom for about 20 minutes before emerging a good couple of lbs lighter. Since then I've been a little more careful to 'go' before runs in the morning or not eat too close to a run and I do have to be careful as I find anything over 3 miles can trigger it. However with careful planning I haven't had any particularly nasty episodes.
Until yesterday that is... although yesterday there was a slight difference as it wasn't induced by running but by laxatives because unfortunately I had to have a colonoscopy today which required 'clearing out' the entire bowel. And this, my friends, made runners trots feel like child's play.
To be fair, I think I may have brought it on myself a little. Half an hour after taking my second dose of Picolax (a heavy duty bowel stripper) I made the mistake of saying 'oh this isn't too bad'. Ten minutes later I'm gripping to the loo, poop like a high powered jet spray, yelling at my eldest 'mummy can't get off the toilet darling! please make sure the baby doesn't climb in the oven!'. I mean seriously, I'm sorry for the mental image, but talk about horrendous. To top it off I wasn't allowed to eat for 36 hours which wouldn't be so bad except that every five minutes one of the children wants something to eat. Have you ever had to prepare food when you're on a nil by mouth diet? It's just cruel. Porridge, cereal, bananas, more cereal, toast dripping with honey - and that was just breakfast.
Thankfully it's all over now and the silver lining is I've lost 3 lbs in less than 2 days (which I will -probably put straight back on tonight when I chow down on my own body weight in fish and rice).
The other benefit is that I now finally have a diagnosis for symptoms which have plagued me for years and although that means accepting a life of living with colitis I'm determined that now I can tackle it head on. It also means you'll be seeing lots of 'coping with colitis as a runner' posts as obviously it effects everything from diet to distance and quite frankly I think it's something we should be far more open about.
In the meantime here are some handy websites with tips for those of us who do suffer with runners trots:
Tips for fixing runner's trots you've never heard of
Avoiding runners trots
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