How Soon Is Too Soon to Work Out After Throwing Up?

Apparently, 15 hours.

Last night, I got home and had a small-ish snack of cereal and grapes. Then, I took Tupac for a walk. (Yes, on a leash. Get over it.) We got back inside and Tupac threw up in the middle of the living room. It was just like this:

About 10 minutes later, I started to feel sick. Then, I felt sicker. Obviously, I was concerned I picked up some weird cat illness via osmosis. It turns out it was either that or mild food poisoning. My money’s on obscure cat illness.

So, I laid around all evening on the couch and moaned and clutched my stomach (and worried this was going to be a repeat of that post-Christmas episode). Eventually, I threw up too. And, then, I went to bed. I mostly sort of slept in spurts, since my stomach hurt all night. When I finally woke up it was significantly past when I was supposed to have woken up and I still felt sort of like shit.

After cancelling all my meetings for the day and laying on the couch some more all morning, I figured it was time to do my workout. Because you don’t skip workouts, right? On the schedule was 9-10 miles easy with ten 1′ pick-ups and then some core work and a 2500y swim.

Yeah, that, um, didn’t happen.

I headed to China Camp for my run, except instead of 7:30 a.m., it was 1:30 p.m. I was hot. I was dying. I’m pretty sure my sweat made it look like I had peed my shorts. I became very concerned about this. My legs felt like I had done squats followed by hill sprints yesterday — I hadn’t. My heart started to hurt after the first two pick-ups. I couldn’t catch my breath. I had to stop and regroup. Three times.

So, yeah, I made it 6.5 miles. Very slowly. Without the rest of the pick-ups. And that was all I did. And, then, I felt destroyed the entire rest of the day.

How long do you need to recover after throwing up a bunch? Well, I’ve done it right before races and been fine. I’ve done it during races and been less fine. But, today, 15 hours was not enough time to be fine.