The Year of Frustrating Sickness continues

2011: in like a flu, out like a chest cold?

The reason I haven't been writing much lately (or running much lately) is that soon after Thanksgiving I came down with a pretty nasty chest cold.  I did manage my Sunday night run (speedwork) and my Tuesday night run (same speedwork), but Tuesday night I noticed that I was coughing a lot afterward.  Wednesday, I needed to take the day off work, which is virtually unheard of for me.  So that was a cue that things were not okay.  The cold stuck around for the next few days: it was one of those ones where you feel better one day, then tired again the next.  So I decided not to run.

The basic rule of running when sick is that you are okay to run if the cold is from your neck up (so a head cold is okay, even if unpleasant) and not okay to run from the neck down (i.e., in your chest).  I knew that I should take it easy and mostly I did.  But I also knew that at some point, I was going to have to go running again.

I got out this Wednesday, so it had been a week of no running at all, which was lousy!  I did some easy speedwork (this might sound like an oxymoron, but it was not a very long distance or amount).  Admittedly, I did not feel 100%, but I did make it through the workout without falling off the treadmill.  Same thing for Thursday.  I decided to go ahead and do the next half-marathon that was on Sunday (yesterday).

This one was the Holiday Half-Marathon, which is a one-way that goes from Madeira Beach to Largo.  The course was meh, I felt.  At least it was overcast so it wasn't exposed and sunny, because I think that it would have been pretty killer in those conditions. I felt cautiously optimistic about the it, thinking that possibly with the time off, I had a chance for a good time. 

And I think that I would have had a chance for a good time, too, if it weren't for this pesky chest cold that REFUSES TO DIE!  So I got through the first two miles in relatively good time, then realized that I was not feeling well.  I walked for a bit and discovered that my heart rate was much too high.  Blerg.  So walk/run it was.  For the whole rest of the half-marathon.  It seemed like one hundred million miles, although my time was actually not horribly dreadful considering the circumstances and that I was walk/running.

In fact, my time was still better than it was for the Oak Tree back in September.  Me sick > me running hills.  Sad but true.

I think that there were some good things to take from this experience.  First, I was glad that I had run into adversarial conditions last summer because I had strategies for coping with this en route.  I decided to run divide my intervals into 0.65, so 5%, then run for 0.55 and recover for 0.1.  Obviously, it worked well enough to get me through the course and I wasn't even the last person.  I'm not sure that I would have known what to do if I hadn't had to complete such runs last summer.  So this was a good thing.

Second, I feel like I am ready and raring to go for a half-marathon.  It was the illness that stopped me this time.  So here's hoping that the next half (January in Clearwater) goes better.  I think that it will, too, because I will have some hill practice time between then and now while I am in Canada for the holidays.  The Boxing Day race in Hamilton has a few nasty ones, so if I can get some hill work in, that should be useful for both.  The next half involves the Causeway (i.e., one giant hill).

Third, I am half-way through the Halfathon!  Which is totally cool.  Only the equivalent of one marathon to go now.  Also, I was happy with this most recent training plan, so I will modify it for the next race and see how that goes.

Fourth, I am incredibly glad that at no point yesterday did I lie down in a ditch and take a nap next to the race course, even though that was very tempting.  Victory!