Schools have started again, and with that goes the fact that the kids are picking up viruses and bringing them home. They were all a bit under the weather and by the time I got back to Dublin I started feeling it as well. I had a sore throat on Monday morning and a splitting headache a few hours later. I slept really badly on Tuesday but made up for it on Wednesday (I can't remember when I last slept for 8 hours solid).
The next fee days all followed a similar pattern. I felt perfectly okay first thing in the morning, developed a splitting headache a few hours later, felt completely devoid of energy and ready to drop after lunch only to gradually recover and start feeling fine again by 4 or 5 o'clock. That describes Monday to Wednesday, but today, Thursday, I seem to be pretty much over it, in contrast to the kids back in Kerry who are still suffering from it.
All the while I kept passing the neck test, i.e. no symptoms below the neck, so I kept on running every day. That was a mixed bag; the legs felt really tired on Monday, most likely from the increased weekend mileage rather than the virus, so I kept it really slow and easy. They felt miraculously recovered by Tuesday, despite the lack of sleep preceding that run.
Wednesday's run was very tough initially. I felt a triple whammy of the cold, the asthma and what I thought was low blood sugar, and really suffered through the first few miles. I would have cut the run short except that it was my commute back home and I had no real alternative than to keep going. Then, 4 miles into a real sufferfest, a miracle happened and I transformed Lazarus-like into a proper runner. In fact, I felt really good, so good that I added a victory lap at home to make it a 10 mile run. And I could hardly believe the watch when I saw that I had averaged faster than 8-minute miles - after the first few miles I thought I'd be lucky to break 9!
For some reason my HRM seems to have gone on strike after 4 miles on Wednesday as well as Thursday. On both occasions it started out perfectly fine only to start measuring a heart rate of over 180 from halfway on. I know perfectly well that it was still in the 140s on both occasions. I took the HR from the first half to make an educated guess of the final value. Not a biggy - but a bit annoying for a numbers geek like me all the same.
- 11 Sep
- 8 miles, 1:08:08, 8:31 pace, HR 143
- feeling the cold
- 12 Sep
- 8.15 miles, 1:03:43, 7:49 pace, HR 147
- not feeling the cold
- 13 Sep
- 10 miles, 1:19:04, 7:54 pace, HR 145
- feeling the cold until half way
- 14 Sep
- 10 miles, 1:21:44, 8:10 pace, HR 141
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