Catching Up

In the name of self-defence, I guess I should point out two things: Firstly, indoor soccer is generally played on wooded floors. It’s not the same kind of floor you may have in your living room; instead it’s softer and slightly bouncy to protect people who choose to go into silly tackles and end up landing head first. Secondly, Niamh doesn’t “have to put up” with my running. As evidence, your Honour, I wish to submit the following transcript of a discussion we had just yesterday:

N: When are you running again?
T: Not yet, maybe on Saturday if I feel better
N: You should go running again. You’re a much happier person on your running days.
T: You notice a difference?
N: Yes, and you were always cranky on Saturdays last year
T: You mean that last year, when I ran 6 days a week, the fact that I deliberately left Saturday free to be able to spend the whole day with the family, backfired?
N: It was nice idea, but yeah, it backfired.
T:
N: Mind, I’m glad you do your long runs at 5 am in the morning. That's nice of you.

There you have it. I didn’t invent any of that. Not only does she not have to suffer for my running, she actively asked me to go and run as soon as I can.

And now it’s confession time. Big time. Something happened back in September, and I never told anyone about it, but it’s been at the back of my mind ever since. I guess I’d better come clean, and now is the perfect opportunity. It was a post in Eric’s blog a few days ago about a runner suffering from tachycardia that reminded me about it again.

Back in September, I ran the Blarney Half Marathon. We made a family day out of it, but that’s a different story altogether. I made one tiny reference in my race report to the incident in question when I said “I didn’t do much of a warm-up, less than I had intended”. Well, there was a reason for that.

About 20 minutes before the race start I started jogging lightly in a field beside the race HQ. After 5 minutes of that I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision blurred, I saw black spots in front of my eyes and nearly fainted. I had to lie down there and then, just to avoid collapsing in a heap. I put my legs up to help the circulation. I already wore my HRM and had a look; it read over 200, and after a minute or two the display stopped. I felt my pulse and it was extremely fast but also irregular, like dub, dub, <pause> dub, dub, dub <even longer pause>, dub, dub, … you get the picture. This went on for, I guess, 5 minutes, and then I slowly started to feel better. Eventually I managed to get up again and since I thought that I couldn’t possibly run a race after that, I went towards the HQ to look for some medical help. I couldn’t see an ambulance, and was about to go inside to ask for a doctor when a loudspeaker came on, “all runners please go to the start line”. I don’t know why I felt compelled to follow that order, but I did. I kept thinking “I can’t possibly run, I’ll faint before the half-mile mark.” However, as I took my place in the field and waited for the five or ten minutes until the gun sounded, I felt ok. So, when the start came and everyone started moving, I moved along with them. Within 2 minutes I had completely forgotten about the problem, and 95 minutes later I had completed the up to then best race of my life.

I haven’t encountered anything like that since. It was really scary, especially when the heart stopped for a beat or two. I definitely felt it was the end of my running, and was afraid of having some defect in my cardiac system. But, I have been fine ever since, and my running has come on in leaps and bounds since then. I certainly don’t intend to give up running, and while I would like to find out what exactly had happened, I’m convinced that it was not a serious or even debilitating issue.

Having gotten that off my chest, let's come back to the present. I’m still off the wagon. The head is improving, instead of a splitting headache I’ve now got a manageable headache, and I might try a run tomorrow, but I will have to wait and see. I’m definitely itching to get back out on the road, but if I feel pain, or if I think that I’m not ready to resume running, I’ll wait longer. My plans for Connemara haven’t changed, in fact we’ve booked a room there for the whole family for the weekend in question. It’s only 8 weeks. Good God, it’s only 8 weeks!!!

1 Feb: 0 miles
2 Feb: 0 miles