No long run- but a long day

It's only 6:30 but it's been a long day so far! Corey and I were planning to do 11 miles this morning- our 2nd to last long run before the Rocktoberfest Half Marathon- before going to lunch and spending the afternoon with his parents. Instead, we spent all day in the emergency room...

Last night Corey swallowed a piece of steak that then seemed to get stuck, so we went to urgent care first thing in the morning. Being good former public health students (!) and not wanting to use the ER wastefully, we didn't rush off to the hospital last night because it didn't seem life-threatening (he could breathe, it was just uncomfortable). However, as soon as we got to urgent care and told them the problem, they encouraged us to go to the ER immediately and said it couldn't wait. So, we ended up in the hospital for about 8 hours. It turned out that some sort of allergic reaction over time and irritation/inflammation had caused his esophagus to close up so they had to go in and put in a balloon to expand it to close-to-normal size. Scary! Fortunately he's fine now (just sleeping off the anesthesia) and from here, he follows up with the gastroenterologist in a few weeks to try to figure out what to do next. I'm about to go out and buy clear liquids while he sleeps because that's all he can eat tonight.

So yeah, in the grand scheme of things, missing a long run's not a huge deal and I'm definitely glad he's ok! Half marathon training pales in comparison to someone's health. Unfortunately, though, we've both missed a few long runs since July, which is not a great thing at all for the training plan. Once we skipped it because we both were in some pain so we decided to intentionally take the week off and rest, once we were out of town for the weekend and were supposed to do the long run on Friday but I woke up with a bad migraine, and then today. Corey's also been experiencing a lot of hamstring pain on the last few long runs that have caused us to stop quite a few times so I'm a little concerned about how the race will go. We still have one more long run, though, so hopefully that will go well and we'll be back on track. Fingers crossed....

On a positive note, I was talking with Pamela on gchat the other day and she asked if we could run the Thunder Road half marathon together! I am SO looking forward to that! We did all of our long runs together when I was still in VA but didn't race together because she's so much speedier than I am. But for this one she's going to lag back with the mid-packers so we can spend time together and get to run together again. I can't wait!!