And just like that, the runger is back.

Background: I had a type A aortic dissection back in May 2021 (at 50 years old, no family history of heart disease). I should have dropped dead, but a combination of 5+ years running my ass off and losing over 100 pounds, combined with having the dumb fucking luck of living 3 miles away from one of the top trauma ERs in the area and 11 or so miles away from one of the top cardiac institutes in the country really saved my ass. And I mean really, the mortality rate is 1% per hour delay to see a doctor, after two days half of the people die if they don't see a doctor. I drove myself to the ER, it took them less than an hour to figure out what was wrong with me, they put me on a medevac helicopter and flew me to the cardiac institute, where they wheeled me straight into the OR. About 8 hours later I woke up to find out that they had performed an open heart surgery and did a full replacement (artificial) of my aorta's upper arch. I was on my feet the next day and back home on day 6.

Running saved my life, and I couldn't wait to get back to it. The problem is that my cardiologist said nope, first you walk, then you run.

After 8 months or so my cardiologist was happy enough with my CT scan to allow me "slow jogging." I had tested myself a few times over the months and I already knew I could do it, but I also knew that I was putting weight and losing muscle, so the walking regime was actually a good thing.

When I started running again I realized that my chest is fine, but my legs aren't. It'll take a while to build that muscle again, but I forgot about glycogen stores. Each day I am able to run farther per stretch, but what stops me is the legs, not the breathing. And yeah, even in 15℉.

The final piece of the puzzle: I had stopped loading on carbs in the past few months, I was worried that with just the walking these would go straight to fat.

After most of a week of feeling the "runger" both after running and late in the afternoon, I just realized that this is my body asking me to start carbo loading again, and that my legs aren't really hurting, what I am feeling is depletion, which I have forgotten after so many years of using energy gels during my longer runs.

So yeah, time to get back on the energy gels, but sadly I'll have to switch to the non-caffeinated ones since caffeine messes with my blood pressure meds.