Downfall

I tell you what happened. I was being sensible and didn’t run in Mallow. Instead I did 10 miles along Caragh Lake, and only two of them at tempo pace, rather than 3 as originally planned. Then I took the Niamh and the kids to Killarney to go ice-skating. They loved it, and I felt good about not driving to Mallow. It's good to be sensible.

I got up at 5:30 Monday morning, feeling pretty good. I had planned another 10 miler, but at slower pace than the day before. I want to build up my mileage, so I didn’t back off, and 10 miles was basically the shortest I used to run when doing high mileage. The weather was quite bad, strong winds rather than the predicted gale force, and no rain originally. High wind always means a trip to Ard-na-Sidhe for a number of 5-mile loops, 2 in that case. I felt good after the first, but then the heavens opened. I hate the combination of wind and rain, and high winds with strong are the bane of my life. I decided to only do 8 miles, because someone who’s still recovering from a chest infection is probably ill advised running in the freezing rain. I was marvelling how sensible I have become recently, though there was that little voice in my head ”if you really want to get top 10 in Connemara you have to stop being sensible at some stage and work you butt off”. Anyway, the rain stopped well before I reached the turnaround point, and I ended up doing 10 miles after all.

6 Jan

10 miles, 1:16:00, 7:36 pace, HR 162
two miles in 6:57. 7:00

7 Jan

10 miles, 1:19:54, 7:59 pace, HR 147

ever since

0

I felt perfectly fine as I came back home. I had my shower and some breakfast, which I had to force down, very unusual. Then I started shivering. Well, it was a cold day, and I turned up the heating. I felt colder. Niamh and the kids got up, had their breakfast and got ready, and by now I was dreading cycling into work, so I asked Niamh for a lift (besides, the weather was turning nasty). At work I immediately knew that I had made a mistake, and after an hour I phoned Niamh to get me back home. By now I was shivering uncontrollably, and when Niamh checked my temperature it was 40C/104F!!! Add to that a splitting headache, pain all over the body, shoulders, chest, legs, they all hurt. During the next few hours the fever sank but I had alternating episodes of being incredibly cold and incredibly hot. During the cold spells I was shivering uncontrollably, during the hot spells I was literally soaking the entire bed with sweat (Niamh slept in the guest room at night, understandably). Taking painkillers gave 2 or 3 hours of relief before the whole thing started again, and I had one of the worst nights of my life. The pattern repeated itself the next day, and only today, Wednesday, I feel some improvement, but I still feel totally crap. Added to all the fun is a cough, and coughing is so painful it makes me want to cry out loud. I surely hope I haven’t cracked a rib or something similar.

The doctor didn’t even want to see me, she immediately recognised the symptoms, apparently there’s a particularly nasty virus doing the rounds presently, and she told us to keep doing what we were doing already, i.e. take some painkillers as often as they allow you on the package, and toughen it out in-between. Our neighbour is a nurse, and when Niamh bumped into her she confirmed that something nasty was indeed doing the rounds, her husband had gotten it over Christmas.

Originally I thought I had been at fault for returning to running too quickly after my chest infection, but hearing all those virus stories makes me think that I would have gotten it regardless, and the timing (coinciding with me running again) might be just coincidence. Nevertheless, I am definitely out of the game for the moment. Yesterday I could hardly turn around in bed because that used up too much energy, and even thinking about running is too strenuous. By now I can feel Connemara slipping away from me. The race is still three months away, but I was supposed to do high mileage around now, not lie in bed moaning in pain. After the “recovery time” over Christmas I have lost two weeks, and I guess there might be two more weeks of that to come. I’m thinking about starting a long build-up to Dublin in October and treat any race in the meantime, including Connemara, as a training run, but we’ll see. At the moment, typing a sorry blog is just about at the edge of what I can do, anything more physically demanding is out of question. And I can feel the next cough coming along. That’s gonna hurt again. Ow! And the painkillers are wearing off again. I hate this.