Thank you !

LBTEPA, TriGirlThea and Ultra Iron GeekGirl have been so kind and supportive. I love blogworld - it's so much better than real life sometimes! (Not as messy, that's for sure!)

So here are some random questions that all of you, who are more experienced than I, might be able to answer.

Electrolytes: other than drinks, where do you get them? I had that awful, awful stomach bug for days. I drank plenty of water and ate lightly while I was on my trip (couldn't find nuun or even Gatorade in Costa Rica!) When I got home I continued to eat more or less normally, and did have one nuun (dissolved in 16 oz water) on the first day home. Could I still be depleted in some way? (Yesterday was my first day without any symptoms at all, but the diarrhea ended about 4 days ago.)

Normal Muscle aches: I hadn't been to Pilates in 2 or 3 weeks. I went yesterday, and today my muscles hurt in all the predictable ways: that feeling you get when the muscle breaks down a tiny bit and needs to rebuild. Mostly in my core, arms and shoulders from all the planks and pushups, but my quads too. My glutes still hurt from my first real run since I got back the previous day. I know I probably should have soaked in cold bath right after the workout, but I didn't. So what do I do now? Take the bath now, a day later? Skip my run today? Take Ibuprofen? Run as usual? Or maybe a lighter one as per Misty's advice, though today normally would be my "long run" - I have 2 weeks to go before my first race, which is 5 miles - I haven't done longer than 4 this spring and not more than 3 since being sick.

Bicycles: Last fall I was given a very old road bike - it's from about 1983. It's steel frame, noticeably lighter and faster than the Trek mountain bike I'd been riding. But it has a few things that are a challenge. The shifters are on the stem so you have to reach around the top tube to shift, which takes a lot of balance - I imagine it will be tough on hills. And the other thing, which seems more difficult for long rides, is that you have to be in the fully bend-over position to reach the brakes. Riding upright feels wrong anyway, as the handlebars are narrow, so if your hands are on the top part it feels unstable. But riding for mile after mile in that bent-over position is hard on the back and especially on the hands - I just took my first ride of the spring, 40 minutes, and my hands and wrists really felt it. This is normal and I'll get used to it, right? (i.e. new road bikes have the same setup?)