Nooooooooooo!!!

I’ve said the weather can’t go on like this. Apparently I’m wrong. The weatherman from the Irish Times says, and I quote, “the current spell of stormy weather is likely to be of several months duration”. Several! Months!! Several Months!!! Surely Not!!!!

On Monday they had predicted that the next storm front would hit us on Wednesday. When I left the house on Tuesday morning, I thought they had been wrong, and the storm had turned up a day early. It was raining heavily and the wind was very strong, which made running up the water witch a real joy, as you can imagine. Apart from the howling winds the run was actually quite unremarkable, until I got home. As soon as I went through the door, my eyes started hurting. It got worse and worse, and then they started swelling up as well. I’m all too aware of the symptoms, it was yet another allergic reaction, but to what I don’t know. I looked really bad, and eventually took an anti-histamine tablet. Niamh didn’t want to let me go to work, but I started to feel better eventually; I got some funny looks in the office. The tablet made me drowsy, and I didn’t have the best day in the office, but the eyes felt better by the hour. One work colleague thought one farmer might have sprayed something dodgy on the fields I had passed, but there is no way of knowing. I’ve been though the whole experience before.

I still felt some residual itchiness today, but it’s mostly gone. What hasn’t gone is the storm front. It turns out the meteorologists were right after all, and Tuesday was just the prelude, today we got hit by the full force. It was really bad during the night; the kids all came into our bed one by one because they were scared. Luckily for me the rain had mostly stopped by 6:30 am, though the wind was as bad as ever. It made the first 5 miles of today’s run a challenge. Actually that’s a lie. Some parts of the Caragh Lake road were quite sheltered; it was over maybe 2 miles where I really had to fight against the wind. It got a lot easier after I turned around, now the wind was blowing me home. I added 10x100 strides into the return leg, but tried to run relaxed and slowly for the rest. It was still completely dark when I got home, we are obviously close to the shortest day of the year. I also noticed the first symptoms of a cold, sore throat, headache and light-headedness. I’ve taken Vitamin C and Echinacea and hope it will keep the actual cold at bay. It’s not just me, Niamh isn’t feeling too well either. The last few times I’ve had the early symptoms I managed to scrape by without getting sick, so I’m reasonably optimistic I might get away with it once more.

12 Dec: 6.75 miles, 56:22, 8:21 pace, avg. HR 156
13 Dec: 10 miles, 1:25, 8:30 pace, avg. HR 153