Running Sick

• Posted: July 24, 2008
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• Author: Shéamus
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• Filed under: Workouts
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• Tags: No tags set for this entry.

As I mentioned previously, my plan this week was to attempt my longest run to date this Friday. To do this, I wanted to have a couple of easy days in the previous 48 hours. Yesterday I did an okay three miles, and wanted to do the same again today.

The problem was, last night I suddenly got pretty sick. I’m not sure exactly what happened - I’m thinking it might have had something to do with the enchiladas I had for dinner - but as soon as I got to work for my shift at 10pm I started to feel really quite queasy and nauseous. My stomach was seriously upset and this, combined with on/off hot and cold sweats and a general feeling of ‘ick’, left me both dehydrated and generally miserable when I got back home around 9.15am this morning.

I ate some breakfast, slept an uneasy few hours, and then got down as much fluids as I possibly could ahead of my run. I set off just before 4pm, and after a few seconds of screwing around with the stop/start button on my watch (unintentionally, I’ll add), I got going. Within just a few hundred metres I knew this was going to be very, very tough. My legs just had… nothing. They felt both heavy and like jelly at the same time. My energy tank was near empty. It wasn’t pretty.

Despite this, I edged an opening 7:45, but after that it became a war against myself to just keep going. I haven’t ran this slow in as long as I can remember, certainly not over the shorter distance. I really struggled around the 2-3 mile area, and for most of that was pretty sure I was going to be done as soon as my watch rolled over the three-mile point. But just before that my legs started feeling a little better and I pushed on for another mile, albeit a slow one. Four miles and 33:33 minutes later, I was done.

Still, I can draw some positives from this.

1. Healthy, I was aiming for three miles. Sick, I managed four.
2. Even though it was slow, 8:21 isn’t a terrible average, given how lousy I felt, and how often the pacer was hovering around the nine-minute mark.
3. These kinds of runs pay off massively down the road. If I had had a short race today I’d have probably cancelled it, but when I really get into the long-distance, ultra-endurance stuff, all of these workouts where I’ve felt like crap for three, four, five, six, ten miles, but still got it done, will be a great source of motivation when I’m right in the middle of a very long race and feeling awful.
4. It’s another four miles in the bag this week.
5. I finished strong.

Not long afterwards, I started to feel better all around. I’m thinking I sweated a lot of the bad stuff out. I feel fine now. Mentally, I’d probably be feeling pretty low if I’d wussed out and only done 20 minutes or so. All told, this worked out okay.

Splits and chart:

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