Have you missed me? It’s been more than a week since my last post and there are reasons: primarily that I was ill for almost all of last week and did not run.
It started on Monday as what I thought were just allergies. Sniffles, sneezing, the usual hayfever signs. By Tuesday morning, though, I woke up with a sore throat from overnight drainage and a bit more sinus-type pressure to go with the hayfever-type symptoms. By Wednesday I was at home from work resting on the sofa. This continued on Thursday. By Friday I felt well enough to go to work but still not well enough to run. I felt slightly better again on Saturday but still not 100% ready to run. Finally, by Sunday I was back to normal.
The dilemma became, though, what to run? On Friday I posted to the Runner’s World forum that I intended to run my scheduled 22 miles on Sunday. I had assumed that I would just be very well-rested for it. Thankfully – and one of the reasons I’m glad I post on RW – a seasoned marathoner replied to my post to urge me not to run the 22 miles.
The conventional thinking is that with time out the body would work so hard to complete this 22 miles after running on low all week that it would be the marathon. My body would not fully recover enough by 23 May to run the marathon or at least run it well.
I consulted another runner at work on Friday and he concurred with this advice. So, I decided to ease myself back in. I’m glad I did because Sunday’s easy three miles weren’t so easy. It was almost as though my legs had forgot how to run. They were stiff, they were heavy and the knees hurt quite badly for the first 1.5 miles. The second 1.5 were much easier and I felt like a runner again. I think that if I had tried to do 22 miles on Sunday I would have quickly realised that it was a bad idea. Your body is intelligent; it knows how to tell you things.
So, yesterday I upped the mileage 1.5 miles to 4.5. I ran both Sunday and yesterday at easy to slow paces, just whatever I was comfortable with. I tried to avoid ‘clock-watching’ the Garmin and just ran. I’m happy to report that yesterday went far better and I feel as though I’m almost back to normal.
I’m going to rest today since I’m scheduled for speed work tonight and I’m not quite up for that yet. Tomorrow is a slow six miles so I will be running that since it’s another 1.5 miles up from yesterday. Thursday is Election Day here so I’ll most likely be in work all day and even into the night so that will be a rest day too. Friday I’ll assess things and see how work commitments are and will look to run the nine miles at marathon pace scheduled for Thursday.
So that is where I am with only 20 days to go to the marathon. Yikes.
P.S. That’s “yikes” to how close we are to the marathon, not to fitness levels. Happy to report I’m feeling fine in that department despite the illness.