Tentative Comeback

The reason I haven't written anything the last 5 days was obviously that I haven't run anything, and this is very much a running blog. I did try to aid recovery by getting more sleep, which worked as far as sleep time was concerned but I have no way of telling if it made any difference with regards to recovery. I also went to the local pharmacy and bought some Vitamin C and Zinc supplements. If you google the effectiveness of supplements you get very mixed results but I reasoned that even if they would not help they were very unlikely to make things worse, so why not.

By Saturday I started getting rather fed up, not with the "no running" but the fact that the bug was still in my system after 2 weeks. I resolved to go to the Doctor on Monday but then I felt a bit better on Sunday and a bit better again on Monday, so decided to wait a little bit longer. I did 5 very, very easy miles on the treadmill on Monday morning, more to test the system than anything related to training, and the 5 miles spooled off without any bother - at least I can still do a bit of exercise without overextending myself. I did the same again on Tuesday but wasn't feeling 100% so I was still unsure if I'm okay to venture out again.

I felt about 90% throughout last week, 95% on Monday and 98% on Tuesday evening. This time I'm pretty sure I'm just about recovered.

I sure missed some interesting running conditions with not just one but two orange warnings in just a few days. The treadmill came in handy the last 2 days for that reason alone. In fact, it was while watching the havoc caused by storm Desmond 2 months ago when I decided to purchase a treadmill.

I'm not even sure if complete rest is better than easy running in this case. I know from experience that a day of easy running is better for recovery from a minor injury than full rest but if the same holds true for an infection is a different thing altogether. The main reason why I took a clean break is because I still remember getting pneumonia 8 years ago after stubbornly running with a chest infection until one morning I could not even get out of bed.

I got this bug while in hospital and would resolve to stay away from that place but I had that resolve already and it wasn't exactly a case of wanting to go there in the first place, so who knows.

I had hoped to start the next training phase this week but obviously that plan did not include getting sick. I'll wait and see how tomorrow goes.

1 Feb

5 miles, 42:55, 8:35 pace, HR 140, treadmill

2 Feb

5 miles, 41:35, 8:19 pace, HR 143, treadmill