Bucked off the saddle again

I used to think of myself as the guy who never got sick. For many years, it was true. There was a long stretch from high school to my post collegiate life where I can honestly not remember ever being sick (well, except for self-induced sickness, which occurred quite often during and immediately after college, but that's a different story....one that I don't remember). Now, I've been knocked out by a bug of some sort three times in the last two and a half months. This is getting just a little ridiculous...

So, as you can probably tell, my week didn't go so great:

Monday - 6 miles recovery in the morning and 4 miles recovery after work. I'm definitely feeling the effects of yesterday's 16 miles in -14 windchill. My head is congested and my throat and nose burn horribly, like I'm totally out of shape and gasping for air, when I run. And, I'm coughing. Not just a little annoying cough, but like a full-body, feels like a chunk of lung is going to come up any second, hacking, painful cough.

Tuesday - 11.7 miles easy (including 9 on my own followed by 2.7 with the running club). I was not feeling good at all throughout the day, but gave the workout a shot anyhow (sound familiar?). The result was that I was totally wiped out by the time I finished. We went to Applebee's for dinner afterwards because my father in law was in town, and I nearly fell asleep in the booth along with my kids, who had caught the bug by that time also.

Wednesday - I woke up, called in to work (for the second time ever), ate a bowl of cereal and went back to sleep until after noon. After another bowl of cereal for lunch, I planted myself in the recliner and that's basically where I remained until it was time to get up and eat another bowl of cereal for dinner (that's right, cold cereal for all three meals; a pretty good day in that respect). My head and throat actually felt better, but I was just beatdown tired and achey. Common sense (aka: my wife) won out, and I didn't even attempt to get in my planned 15 miler. This becomes my first non-running day of 2008.

Thursday - Feeling a little better, I head back to work and get in 6 miles of recovery afterwards (which don't feel too good).

Friday - Not feeling great, but not really feeling bad either, I decided to try and get in a tempo workout: 11 miles with 5 @ tempo pace. The first 3 warmup miles don't feel so good and, needless to say, the first 2 tempo miles feel even worse....and aren't even actually tempo pace, but about 20 seconds slower (which is as fast as I can apparently move on this day). I say to hell with it and just finish the 11 miles at what should be an easy pace, but doesn't feel very easy. Despite my wife's advice and the way my body feels (tired and sore), I also set out in the afternoon for a 4 mile recovery run, which actually goes very well and I end up running effortlessly for the first time since the previous Saturday. How does the same pace feel horrible in the morning, but effortless the same afternoon? Such are the mysteries of running...

Saturday - 8 miles at general aerobic pace. This run started out with the running club in Spearfish. Most everyone else was only planning on going 5 or 6 miles and I really wanted to run a decent pace after the week I'd just been through, so I kicked it in a little bit and ended up running all but the first mile and half or so by myself. Not sure how far the group went, but my truck was all alone in the parking lot when I got back.

Sunday - 20 miles. I've said it many times before and I'll say it many times more. Mother Nature is a dirty, slutty, no-good, disease-ridden, crack-smokin, two-dollar-trick-turnin whore. I woke up to temps in the teens, which isn't horrible, but the wind was blowing 25-30 and was only supposed to get worse as the day went on (the highest gusts end up at around 50). I am not about to repeat last week's long run debacle, so resign myself to waiting until the gym opens at 1:00 so I can run on the indoor track. The run itself goes just about as well as 230 laps around a tiny track can (meaning that I didn't start hallucinating or suffer from vertigo).

Total - 70.7 miles (15.3 short of expected)

I said this the last two times I was sick recently, but I really hope this is out of my system for now (or forever, for that matter). I'm just getting into the meat of my training plan for Colorado, and would really like to put together a string of 11 good weeks between now and then. Please, oh so great and powerful Running Gods, are you listening?