Wow, big swings in the last few weeks. Most of it occured the weekend before Thanksgiving. That Saturday was my big 26 mile training run. The few days leading up to it I was doing all the right things, eating the right food, gave up dehydrating caffine, had Krissy's delicous pasta, everything. I had a slight sore throat the night before, but I felt really good going into the run.
It was 33 degrees that morning. I was about to run for 6 or 7 hrs in 33 degree weather. Nuts. So I dressed in a trillion layers and drove my cold car to the training site. They had a heated tent, but I didn't bother to go in, why tease my body with something like warmth. And after some instruction on a shorter loop that we would repeate, we were off.
I started off the first 3 miles and felt awesome. I can usually tell in the first mile or two how a run will be, and based on that day I thought I will cruise through 26 miles, then go home and bench press a Chevy. As we kept logging the miles, my body was adjusting to the fridgid temperature and I was on cruise control. The only bad thing was the mile from Oak Street Beach towards Navy Pier. We were right on the lake and wind blowing off the water was horrible. Some of the waves crashed onto the path and caused quite a bit of ice. Upon further review, I'm happy for the ice. Concentrating so much on not breaking my neck or slipping into the lake is about the only thing that kept my mind from that face freezing wind.
At the turnaround point I was still feeling pretty good, about 7 miles down and I even thought I saw the sun peek through for just a second. However, with that chilly wind hitting me in the face it very well could have been some type of hallucination.
Then something less than awesome happened. On the next 7 miles back, I started to feel fatigued. Not only was my energy low, but my hamstrings were getting tight. I stretched for a moment, but no good. Then my quads started feeling horrible. Then my calves. Having one muscle group go bad is not abnormal, that happens all the time, but having 3 go was totally new and was not fun at all. My energy was falling fast. I felt like I was in a video game and I used up all of my turbo and gas, but the turbo wasn't recharging. Around mile 12 I was running on empty and my muscles were screaming. I kept telling myself it might have been the cold temps causing my muscles to tighten or something, but it was really ticking me off. I rocked 23 miles without a problem, what was happening. When we got to the start at mile 15 half of our group broke off and quit for the day. I refused and was hoping a 30 second stretch and some gatoraide would help. Nope. I made it 2 more miles and I was done.
FAILURE!
I wanted to hang myself. I felt completely and totally miserable. I didn't say much to anyone at the tent, I just got a banana and peanut butter to help the muscles and drove home. When I got home I started acting like a 15 year old girl with attitude. I was throwing off my clothes and whipped my shoes across the kitchen. I was so upset with myself for quitting I refuesed to let myself have food. I showered up, grabbed a goo to feed my muscles and went to bed. Few times could I ever remember being so ashamed.
Krissy got home and was in a great mood. She's always helpful after a long run and asked me what she could do. I was still in my teenage angst stage so I gave some jerk-like answer and wrapped myself again in blankets. As the hours went on I kept putting more and more blankets on. Krissy, who is always cold, was telling me it was warm in the apartment. No way. I thought the heat must be broken because I was wearing my PJ's, a sweatshirt, 3 blankets and was freezing and shivering. Well fast forward a couple of hours and it was official, I had the flu, and bad.
That night I was awoke a couple of times shivering. 101 degrees and climbing fast. My body has reacted strangely to long runs, but nothing like this. I think I had the flu for the entire run and that is why I was running low on energy. The good news is I had an excuse/reason (ok, lame excuse) for having the worst run of my entire training period. The bad news is that the flu can absolutely destroy a runner. Achey muscles, lack of energy, poor temperature control.
I took it very easy the next few days, I even took a day off of work. The 3 sick day I have taken in 5 years. By Monday night I wasn't getting better. It was time to call in the big guns. NyQuil. I never mesed with NyQuil before, but I heard the stories and I knew the demon I was calling down. But this was a serious time, no time for anything but the best. So I started. In my head, a battle was about to be waged between the evil forces of Flu and arrogant but powerful white knight named NyQuil. I imagined a long and hard fought war, but in the end the good guy would prevail.
Nope. Flu-1, NyQuil-0.
I think NyQuil was having a Rocky-like comeback, but Flu went old school WWF and when the ref wasn't looking, called on his evil friend Bronchitis to hit NyQuil in the back of the head with a folding chair. NyQuil fell and I was in pieces. The flu was still around and now my lungs were filling up. I had pnemonia the year before so I guess I'm always at risk, it was looking grim.
It was Thursday, Thanksgiving and the Flu and his evil minion Bronchitis were having a celebritory dance in my chest. But then our story takes another turn. I brought in the biggest of the big guns. The only thing on earth stronger than NyQuil.....Mom.
A 4-day weekend home with the parents and mom who has handled this before, round 2 was going to be interesting. Thursday was bad, I was sleeping and coughing and freezing and couldn't sleep laying down so had to sleep sitting up so I was miserable. Flu and Bronchitis came out strong. Mom was holding her own, but the tag team duo of F and B were overmatching her. Mom then surprised F and B with a little rope-a-dope and tagged her hidden parnter, antibiotics. Zithromax Z-Pak. Flu and Bronchitis spent so much of thier energy fighting Mom, that they didn't see Zithromax's flying elbow drop coming. BOOM!!!!!
By the end of the weekend I was feeling much better. I had an inhaler and some antibiotics and drank enough tea and soup to last an eternity.
The final week and a half is full with constant coughing as bronchitis is refusing to go away and I will unfortunatly bring him with me to Hawaii. I haven't run much in the last 2 weeks. It's supposed to be a tapering time with little running anyways, but I did next to nothing. I'm coming in a little weak and not fully healed, but if I can survivie 17 miles with the flu at 33 degrees, I think I can at least crawl across the finish line at 80 degrees on the ocean.
Here is to hoping.
It was 33 degrees that morning. I was about to run for 6 or 7 hrs in 33 degree weather. Nuts. So I dressed in a trillion layers and drove my cold car to the training site. They had a heated tent, but I didn't bother to go in, why tease my body with something like warmth. And after some instruction on a shorter loop that we would repeate, we were off.
I started off the first 3 miles and felt awesome. I can usually tell in the first mile or two how a run will be, and based on that day I thought I will cruise through 26 miles, then go home and bench press a Chevy. As we kept logging the miles, my body was adjusting to the fridgid temperature and I was on cruise control. The only bad thing was the mile from Oak Street Beach towards Navy Pier. We were right on the lake and wind blowing off the water was horrible. Some of the waves crashed onto the path and caused quite a bit of ice. Upon further review, I'm happy for the ice. Concentrating so much on not breaking my neck or slipping into the lake is about the only thing that kept my mind from that face freezing wind.
At the turnaround point I was still feeling pretty good, about 7 miles down and I even thought I saw the sun peek through for just a second. However, with that chilly wind hitting me in the face it very well could have been some type of hallucination.
Then something less than awesome happened. On the next 7 miles back, I started to feel fatigued. Not only was my energy low, but my hamstrings were getting tight. I stretched for a moment, but no good. Then my quads started feeling horrible. Then my calves. Having one muscle group go bad is not abnormal, that happens all the time, but having 3 go was totally new and was not fun at all. My energy was falling fast. I felt like I was in a video game and I used up all of my turbo and gas, but the turbo wasn't recharging. Around mile 12 I was running on empty and my muscles were screaming. I kept telling myself it might have been the cold temps causing my muscles to tighten or something, but it was really ticking me off. I rocked 23 miles without a problem, what was happening. When we got to the start at mile 15 half of our group broke off and quit for the day. I refused and was hoping a 30 second stretch and some gatoraide would help. Nope. I made it 2 more miles and I was done.
FAILURE!
I wanted to hang myself. I felt completely and totally miserable. I didn't say much to anyone at the tent, I just got a banana and peanut butter to help the muscles and drove home. When I got home I started acting like a 15 year old girl with attitude. I was throwing off my clothes and whipped my shoes across the kitchen. I was so upset with myself for quitting I refuesed to let myself have food. I showered up, grabbed a goo to feed my muscles and went to bed. Few times could I ever remember being so ashamed.
Krissy got home and was in a great mood. She's always helpful after a long run and asked me what she could do. I was still in my teenage angst stage so I gave some jerk-like answer and wrapped myself again in blankets. As the hours went on I kept putting more and more blankets on. Krissy, who is always cold, was telling me it was warm in the apartment. No way. I thought the heat must be broken because I was wearing my PJ's, a sweatshirt, 3 blankets and was freezing and shivering. Well fast forward a couple of hours and it was official, I had the flu, and bad.
That night I was awoke a couple of times shivering. 101 degrees and climbing fast. My body has reacted strangely to long runs, but nothing like this. I think I had the flu for the entire run and that is why I was running low on energy. The good news is I had an excuse/reason (ok, lame excuse) for having the worst run of my entire training period. The bad news is that the flu can absolutely destroy a runner. Achey muscles, lack of energy, poor temperature control.
I took it very easy the next few days, I even took a day off of work. The 3 sick day I have taken in 5 years. By Monday night I wasn't getting better. It was time to call in the big guns. NyQuil. I never mesed with NyQuil before, but I heard the stories and I knew the demon I was calling down. But this was a serious time, no time for anything but the best. So I started. In my head, a battle was about to be waged between the evil forces of Flu and arrogant but powerful white knight named NyQuil. I imagined a long and hard fought war, but in the end the good guy would prevail.
Nope. Flu-1, NyQuil-0.
I think NyQuil was having a Rocky-like comeback, but Flu went old school WWF and when the ref wasn't looking, called on his evil friend Bronchitis to hit NyQuil in the back of the head with a folding chair. NyQuil fell and I was in pieces. The flu was still around and now my lungs were filling up. I had pnemonia the year before so I guess I'm always at risk, it was looking grim.
It was Thursday, Thanksgiving and the Flu and his evil minion Bronchitis were having a celebritory dance in my chest. But then our story takes another turn. I brought in the biggest of the big guns. The only thing on earth stronger than NyQuil.....Mom.
A 4-day weekend home with the parents and mom who has handled this before, round 2 was going to be interesting. Thursday was bad, I was sleeping and coughing and freezing and couldn't sleep laying down so had to sleep sitting up so I was miserable. Flu and Bronchitis came out strong. Mom was holding her own, but the tag team duo of F and B were overmatching her. Mom then surprised F and B with a little rope-a-dope and tagged her hidden parnter, antibiotics. Zithromax Z-Pak. Flu and Bronchitis spent so much of thier energy fighting Mom, that they didn't see Zithromax's flying elbow drop coming. BOOM!!!!!
By the end of the weekend I was feeling much better. I had an inhaler and some antibiotics and drank enough tea and soup to last an eternity.
The final week and a half is full with constant coughing as bronchitis is refusing to go away and I will unfortunatly bring him with me to Hawaii. I haven't run much in the last 2 weeks. It's supposed to be a tapering time with little running anyways, but I did next to nothing. I'm coming in a little weak and not fully healed, but if I can survivie 17 miles with the flu at 33 degrees, I think I can at least crawl across the finish line at 80 degrees on the ocean.
Here is to hoping.
1 comment:
Coolest post yet and sufficient reason why you should blog more my friend, loved the WWF allegory.
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