Anchors Away

Well, I may have spoken too soon. By Monday I only had a residual cough and some post nasal drip so I happily emailed Coach Bill that I was recovering well and ready to resume my normal routine.

Perhaps no big deal for someone whose routine is to just sit around most of the time. But for someone who was thinking she'd just bounce back to doing her workouts full force, there was still something definitely amiss!

Like who attached a big fat anchor to me so that swimming 100 yards in 2:00 would all of a sudden seem like such a chore? Who's messing with the weights at the gym making them feel heavier? Why do I sound and feel like an 800# gorilla when I run?

AAAGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

Luckily, there's someone stopping me from trying to make up sucky workouts, esp. that swim, which was my only scheduled swim workout this week and really shook my confidence. How could I have gotten so slow in just a week?

But I'm gonna stick to the plan and keep moving ahead. Thou shalt not obsess about performance so early in the game and particularly following an illness, right?

There is one thing I do feel good about so far this week, however, and that's my stretching. As you can see below, I used to be quite flexible (that's me doing the splits!).



But after a few years of not stretching regularly, my hip flexors and hammies had gotten so frickin tight I could barely touch my toes. Not good! So I started diligently stretching after lifting weights (3 times/week) and it has already seemed to make a difference. The first time I did some speed work a couple weeks ago, my right (previously injured) hammy started complaining after doing a few fast intervals of running. Today, I didn't hear a peep from it and I pushed my pace a little harder. Woohoo!

Now if I can just get rid of this darn lingering illness crap!!

No Race, No Worries

Thank you, everyone, for your well wishes! Except for some occasional coughing and post-nasal drip, I'm pretty much back to normal. YAY!

As for the half marathon yesterday, I decided against doing it, although I'm confident that I could have run it easy and finished. Why did I opt to take my first-ever DNS (Did Not Start)?

Because some things are more important than a race, especially one that was "C priority."

I signed up for the 26.2/13.1 Run with Donna (aka National Marathon to Fight Breast Cancer) nearly a year ago to run it with some friends. Being three hours away and on Valentine's Day weekend, I thought it would make a nice weekend getaway with my husband too. But Friday night, Dave came home from the west coast sick with the same flu bug I had this week. It hit him the same time but he'd not had the luxury to rest as much as me while on travel and he desperately needed to recuperate before heading out on his next business trip Monday (today).

So rather than drag him to the race sick or spend the weekend without him, I chose to stay home and make sure both of us got some extra rest. There was no day-of-race packet pickup available anyway even if I'd gotten the urge to drive 6 hours roundtrip and run the race spur of the moment.



Instead, we shared some soup, snuggles and sniffles. Then the next day we were feeling well enough to go out so we did something we've never done before. We both dressed in pink, headed over to Costco and ransacked the food sampling stations (OK, just the first one we'd never done before :-)

Exercise-wise, I still managed to do all my assigned workouts this week, albeit some were at a lower resistance/intensity level:

3 full-body strength workouts (starting to notice some adaptations!)
2 swims (4950 yards - one group swim, one on my own with 500 yds kicking -- bleah)
2 runs (14 mi - one easy run and one semi-speed workout)
1 bike ride (41 mi - easy, optional ride)

Week two down and hopefully no more illnesses for the rest of the year!

The Three Letter Workout

WOWEE! I've sweated more than I have running a marathon. My whole body ached as if I'd just done a maximal strength workout 50 times. My heart rate stayed elevated for two days and I lost 2 pounds.

So what was this amazing workout I did? Was it CrossFit, Kettlebells or some other latest killer functional workout?

Yeah, I wish.

Unfortunately, it was the darn FLU. The little cough I had Monday night morphed into something much more evil after my Tuesday morning swim. I spent much of the day and all day Wednesday in bed.

Today I'm feeling much better. Did one strength workout today and I'm clearly not 100%, but even 50% is far better than before. This Sunday I have a half marathon in Jacksonville (a couple hours away) that I had been planning to run with some friends and Coach Bill says to use my judgement. It's one thing to make a dumb mistake on your own when no one's looking but another when someone is watching. Hopefully the answer will become more apparent by Sunday.

Wish me luck!

The Other Marathon

Began on Monday, just a couple hours after I dropped off Dave at the airport.

Day 1: Fever, body aches.

Day 2: Stomach cramps, diarrhea.

Day 3: Same, but not as bad.

Fortunately, I'm an endurance athlete.

I gathered all my medicines, water bottles and other necessities (cell phone, laptop) around me, laid down in bed and hung on. Dave asked if he should come home to take care of me but I told him there was nothing he could do. Even seeing a doc would not really help, just had to let the bug run its course, which it did.

So today, the 4th day, I am finally feeling a whole lot better. I'm up out of bed and able to eat normal solid food again -- YAY!!!

Was this perhaps my body's way of forcing me to rest???

Having felt so good after my race last Saturday, I was (quietly) considering doing a sprint tri this Saturday to get in one last open water swim before Miami Man. But now that I'm in a weakened state, I've decided against it. My focus will be to get 100% healthy by Nov. 11.

Maybe I just needed a good kick in the gut to remind me ...