Let It Bee

It was supposed to be a nice, short, relaxing taper run, but a minute into Wednesday's lunchtime run I accidentally swallowed an insect that had flown right into my mouth. It may have been a bee, I'm not sure because I didn't see it but it sure was big enough. Within seconds I could feel a swelling in my throat. After a few rather anxious moments I realised that my breathing was unaffected, so I a) continued to run and b) continued to live. Eating/drinking subsequently was ok, if a bit uncomfortable, though it could have been so much worse it doesn't bear thinking about.

The rest of the day I had a rather uncomfortable feeling in my throat but it got significantly better towards the evening. However, it was back to its most uncomfortable best the next morning, and last night (from Thursday to Friday) I kept dreaming that I was choking and completely unable to breathe, I was literally going from nightmare to nightmare all night. Jesus Christ, how the hell did that stuff happen!

I have the minor matter of a 80 km mountain race coming up tomorrow and I'm not quite as relaxed as I'd prefer to be but there's not much I can do about it now. I'm feeling a lot better today, so if I managed to get some sleep tonight that would be great but I can count the number of times I slept well the night before a long race on the fingers of one hand and still have most digits left over, so I will probably go into it slightly underslept.

Then again, personally I find lack of sleep immediately before a race much less of an issue than it's usually made out to be, I have qualified and run World Championships while in theory being tired from lack of sleep, so I don't think it will be an issue once I hit the road trail!!

And so with that, see you on the other side, my friends!