Ladies (or anyone?) of letsrun–ever get excruciating abdominal cramps after racing hard?

Err, no. I would get that looked into. It might not be your uterus anyway.

Me! I attribute the stomach pain to being nervous before a workout or race. It's usually accompanied by diahrrea.

Not a lady, 36yo M. Not a doctor, so please don't take my medical advice. I don't know if I have the same thing as you, but it sounds similar (except that I don't have a uterus).

I sometimes have a lot of very intense pain in my guts after a race or really hard workout, and it can take more than a few hours for the pain to clear away. I just feel really horrible when it happens.

The second time this happened I was feeling a bit bad after finishing, but felt increasingly worse during the train ride to our hotel. After getting out of the train I sat down on a bench and fainted. My wife called an ambulance but by the time they got there it was going much better already. They said it's either a cold stomach or acute appendicitis (to be treated immediately in the hospital). As I was feeling much better we guessed it was the cold stomach and all was fine the next day.

I had it after my marathon PR last year, almost fainted during the car ride home (I wasn't driving). After that I visited the GP and asked her about it. She said it was almost certainly a cold stomach, nothing to really worry about. Her advice was to always lie down when I feel it, and drink a lukewarm beverage (not hot, not cold). During my last race I didn't have it at all, even though it wasn't all that warm.

Have you ever had or been checked for ovarian cysts?

I would get the same exact pain only after the shorter distance races but after 30 minutes it would disappear. Never really thought anything of it, but when my gyno found I had recurring cysts, he asked about if I ever had any pelvic pain. I told him about that since it is definitely excruciating for a couple minutes.

I was told that it’s probably fluid in my pelvis that hasn’t been reabsorbed yet that has leaked from the cysts as they rupture/dissolve. When you’re exerting yourself during a race, it could cause it to move around quite a bit and then gets painful when it’s trying to settle back down after.

Based on you saying it’s a week before your period it could also just be ovulation pain. There’s a lot of stuff going on down there at all times so it really could be anything , but worth checking it out if you’re concerned or it gets worse.

female mid d runner here, and I've had exactly the issue you describe right at the start of my period, a few minutes after a mile race. It felt like freakin contractions, and I was on the ground feeling like I was gonna throw up. It's not a stomach thing, it's a uterus thing.

Probably has something to do with the body releasing hormones that cause uterine contractions to expel period blood, and maybe the race puts things into overdrive and makes that worse. Like you, I also felt compelled to say 'I'm not a wimp'..it's seriously just pain that is hard to imagine unless you're experiencing it.