Another Year Older

It’s not been the best week ever, despite celebrating a lovely birthday with my family. I was already starting to get sick when I ran the marathon on Saturday, which probably did not help things, and this week I was just trying to recover from both the marathon as well as the cold. I would call it man flu but I got it from Lola initially and now Niamh is suffering herself, so it’s not just my inadequate set of male chromosomes that’s responsible.

I followed the always-the-same post-marathon recovery protocol of 5 mile runs every morning until the legs felt better and 8 miles after that. With the cold adding another variable it was hard to say where exactly I was in the recovery process. I felt rotten on Monday, better on Tuesday, much better on Wednesday but worse again on Thursday.

A couple of years ago Grellan had set the gold standard for what you should be doing on your 45^th birthday by running a set of 3 15-mile runs in 24 hours. I wasn't ever going to match that only 3 days after a marathon but even so it did strike me that a very slow 5-mile recovery run must have been the most pathetic birthday run in history.

I did eventually up the daily mileage to 8 on Wednesday but I'm not entirely sure if that was the right thing to do. The legs had felt fine initially but now seem to be going backwards, and my HR data is definitely going the wrong way. That one I definitely blame on the cold, but with Lola now feeling perfectly recovered (she felt up and down a few times as well) I still think this will be all over in a few days anyway.

The weather didn't do much to help things on Wednesday and Thursday. Icy cold rain being blown straight into your face by a gale force wind is just about my least favourite kind of weather, and of course that’s exactly what it was like the last couple of days, with the forecast for the next few days not exactly being promising either. It did strike me that running in such weather was probably not the best thing to do for someone battling with a cold virus, but, as mentioned before, my mindset is if in any doubt, go for a run. I am mindful that 8 years ago I contracted pneumonia by running in cold rainy weather while feeling sick but my chest is completely clear, so basically I expect to be able to get away with it.

26 Jan

5 miles, 44:53, 8:56 pace, HR 134

27 Jan

5 miles, 43:80, 8:38 pace, HR 136

28 Jan

8 miles, 1:08:45, 8:36 pace, HR 140

29 Jan

8 miles, 1:07:08, 8:23 pace, HR 145