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Month: March 2012

First 20 of 2012

First 20 of 2012

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Technically, Saturday should have been my second 20-miler of 2012, but life got in the way a few weeks ago, between C falling ill on Friday-Saturday and then A falling ill and getting hospitalized Saturday-Sunday.  How funny (or maybe ironic is a better way to look at it) that the second week I’m to do my 20 I also fall ill days before.

This time, though, I pulled through.

I told my loved ones (and myself) and my training partner that the full 20 might not happen, given that I was a bit laid-up earlier in the week and that the EZ 5 on Friday seemed pretty tough.  In my mind, I didn’t think I’d do much beyond 13 or 15 on Saturday, and I was ok with that.  This training plan I’m following calls for 3 20s, which is aggressive in a 14-week program but totally doable and something I’ve done before in previous marathoning trainings.

Perhaps contrary to popular belief (or common sense), I don’t think 20s are the hardest runs of the marathon training cycle.  20s bring with them a sense of accomplishment but also a lot of fanfare:

  • it’s the longest distance (or the longest time you’ll spend on your feet) during your training cycle.
  • If your body can handle 20, then it can surely handle 26.2.
  • A 20 training run is very different than, say, a 20 race.  Typically, you’re more concerned with the time you spend on your feet in training, whereas in racing, you’re racing, so speed is of the essence.

I could easily continue to rant on this.  At any rate, what transpired on Saturday morning was a delightful and welcome surprise.  The coolish, crispish air of a late March morning in Chicago was perfect for a 20.  It was warm enough (or humid enough) to run in shorts and a tank, but the sun was nowhere to be seen.  The fog was dense and thick, so while I knew we were running from Museum Campus south to MSI, and then north to the bridge at North Avenue, before heading south again, I felt like we were running through the clouds.  Time or pace wasn’t particularly important, since we knew we weren’t trying to race this and since both of us were racing in the Shuffle the following day, but we still went at a good training clip, oscillating between 8:50s and 9s on average. And, maybe best of all, or at least worth mentioning, though I still had a bit of a cough and some runny nose action and a little stuffiness in my head leftover from the sinusitis I was rockin’ earlier in the week, I felt fine.  Pretty well, even.

This 20 delightfully surprised me.  It was my first of 2012 and only my second since my first post-pregnancy 20 that I ran in Barrington with Chris in November, helping her in her final prep for her Hawaii marathon.  Even though I haven’t been pregnant for nearly a year now, and my body is more or less back to normal (which is a post I’ve been meaning to write), I still feel some strange bit of hesitation as I find myself full-tilt back into marathoning and training.  I guess if nothing else, being pregnant, and having a healthy pregnancy from start to finish, has made me appreciate the human body–my human body–for everything that it can do when needed or asked.

Just as that sentiment became apparent to me during pregnancy and childbirth, so, too, but to a lesser degree, did it also manifest on Saturday’s 20.

RWS, or Listen to Your Body

RWS, or Listen to Your Body

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Running while sick, that is.

This is one of those things that it really depends on a couple things: your body, for starters; how (or where) you’re sick, secondly; and whom you ask.

Of course, no one knows your body better than you.  That goes without saying.  What works for some people, or what does (or doesn’t) bother them, is sheer hell for others.  Take the common cold, for instance.  It affects people very differently.  We all probably know people who are sick far more frequently than others and just as well, the people at the opposite end of the spectrum, who seem that they are somehow living in their own separate untouchable/super-healthy world because they manage to evade sickness and the common cold every single year.

Luckily–knock on wood this holds true–I’m in the latter camp.

I just don’t get sick very often.

I think my lack of sickness comes in large part because of my lifestyle, but I also think my diet (strict vegetarianism, borderline veganism) has a lot to do with it, too.  It’s all anecdotal, but I think there’s something to it.  I think I’m just one of the freaks that can avoid sickness for some reason or, maybe more scientifically, cold and flu symptoms don’t seem to affect me as they do others.  I don’t really know.  I’m just lucky, I’m guess.  And incredibly, incredibly grateful.

So anyway, last week, on basically the morning that I ran Cary, I fell ill.  The day before, my throat was a little sore all day, but I chalked it up to allergies (which I wasn’t diagnosed with until I was an undergrad, and even then I was dubious at my doctor’s diagnosis.  Still am, to a degree.  I guess it is a little hard to live in the Midwest, though, without having some semblance of allergies.  Digression.).  Saturday night into Sunday morning, the day of the race, I woke up several times because I thought my throat was burning.  Fast-forward to later in the day, after awakening at 5am, driving over an hour to Cary, and running a half marathon on hills and in humidity, and after spending several hours with a friend and her baby, I drop another two and a half hours at a clinic in Rockford to be told that I had viral sinusitis.

What?

Not a sinus infection (which was my Erin diagnosis), but worse than a cold or just another annoyance from seasonal allergies.  Bad enough for me take some OTCs, some prescription-strength codeine, and to call in sick (to A, ha!) for a day, and to (gasp!) not run for about four days.  It’s actually a bit comical to write about now, because it doesn’t sound that bad, but good Lord, last week was miserable.  As much as I can recall, I haven’t been that sick since well before I was pregnant, so sometime in 2010, if not 2009.

When you’re sick only once every few years, it kinda blows when you finally realize you’re not as invincible as you thought.

I wanted to keep running, once I had my couple days of rest following Tuesday, because last week was supposed to be a build week that would end on a 20 on Saturday and the Shuffle on Sunday.  I didn’t want to lose four days of workouts to this annoying sickness that found me in bed all day once last week and taking medicine every four hours all the other days to help offer some relief.  My mind was saying go for it, but my body was saying no-the-fuck-way.

So this is where the debate comes in regarding when and how much people should exercise, in general, or run, specifically, while ill.

A quick Google search will indicate that some use the above/below the neck rule–that if you have a cold and it’s “above” your neck, that it’s ok to run or exercise, but to not overdo it, but if it’s “below,” then stay in bed and take a rest day (or two or three).

Others offer more strict prescriptive approaches, maintaining that there’s actually a hard-and-fast number–and for most runners, it’s 60 miles per week–that sets runners over the edge into compromising their immune systems enough that’ll set themselves over into illness territory.

And of course, diagnosing this stuff based on what the interwebs say is always something of a joke, because a lot of the pages end with the obligatory “stop what you’re doing and call your doctor if you’re experiencing any chest pain or shortness of breath” warning that they probably have to post for everyone out there who is more inclined to read something online and take it to heart than they are to listen to their own bodies.

So what ultimately happened last week?

I listened to my body (and my family).

I was lazy.

I didn’t do much of anything at all last week, until Friday, when I finally ran a very easy five miles before the weekend’s schedule. All told, at least right now, I’m glad I did what I did because it’s better to be sidelined with something annoying like this for four days than something far worse for four weeks.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of swallowing my pride (and my phelgm… eww).