Strides With A Sting

Ok, so last week I had felt really good and started to wonder if I had finally reached the turning point. This week was fairly crap again, so I guess I haven't. Maybe I need to forget about running competitively again but it's hard for the mind to let go.

Mind, the week could have ended a lot worse, but I'll get to that later.

I ran to and from office once a day Tuesday to Friday, and with Cabinteely Park about to be closed in the evenings I went back to my previous commute route through Kilbogget and Clonkeen Park, which is actually very nice but a mile longer, and on Thursday night it had the added challenge of feeling more like dodging all the illegal Halloween fireworks and didn't feel entirely safe, to be honest, but thankfully it all passed with out incident.

The real drama happened on Saturday, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it almost happened. I decided to do three laps of 30/30 (30 seconds fast, 30 seconds recovery) because I figured one of the problems with my running is the fact that I'm doing an awful lot of slow but very little fast running, so I decided to work on my leg turnover and hope it will improve my efficiency, basically trying to do a neuro-muscular workout.

I'm not biting my lip, that's the original swelling.

Anyway, all was going perfectly fine until early into the third lap when a wasp headed straight for my mouth, kamikaze style. I somehow managed to catch it with my lips, so when it did sting me it was at the inside of my lips rather than the back of my throat, which would have been a lot worse potentially because it immediately started to swell. I even managed to pull the stinger out of my lip there and then, but the damage had already been done. I was a bit shocked but figured I might as well finish the last of my workout before going home, what difference would it have made otherwise?

The swelling in my lip went down after a couple of hours but the left side of my face / jaw line started to swell instead. It's rather uncomfortable but manageable and it looks fairly awful. Two day earlier and I could have made use of it by dressing up as Quasimodo for Halloween without requiring a face mask, but I'd missed that! I took some antihistamines because I reckoned the swelling could have been an allergic reaction but it didn't seem to make any difference apart from making me drowsy for the rest of the day.

Well, no major harm done though it could have been a lot worse, which doesn't bare thinking about it. The legs felt fairly awful on Sunday, which I attribute to the strides rather than the sting, and I cut my planned long run short and finished the week just under 70 miles, which is still a high enough number anyway.