A midsummer night's flu.

It started with a niggle.  What is a niggle you say?  According to Kara Goucher, its little aches and pains that aren't necessarily an injury, but more of a troublesome annoyance.  My whole body started to ache.  Maybe i managed to pull ever single muscle at once?  Maybe i woke up in my sleep and finally did the strength training i have been missing?  Maybe my whole body was filled with lactic acid?  I don't know, i'm not a doctor, dammit.


But then came my long run on Saturday.  I have good runs, and bad runs, but rarely do i have a run that is so horrible that i am convinced i am dying and can't finish.  It was so ugly it was beyond words.  And for a 15-miler and a comfortable pace, it shouldn't have been like that.  Needless to say, i stopped at 13 and actually had to lay on the ground for 30 minutes because i couldn't drive myself home.  By the time i did get home, all i could do was lay on the couch and nap.  It was official.  I was the only moron to who gets sick in the middle of summer. 


Needless to say, my training is at a complete hiatus.  I shouldn't even be at work, but they seem to frown upon taking sick days, so i will proceed to spread my germs all over the office.  I am starting to feel panicky because of the rapidly approaching Chicago Marathon.  How will i over come this huge snafu in my training??


Here's the thing:  Because i have a blog, i am able to review all my training from the last marathon!  And guess what?  The day i did 15 miles, i completely failed, it was the worst run of the entire training season, and i ended up getting sick.  Are we noticing a trend?  Obviously, i have some kind of "halfway through training" wall.  And after that first crappiest run ever, i got some advice which i will now share with you:

Take some time off.  Seriously.  When your body is sick, it means that you have managed to piss off your immune system, and that is a system you want on your side.  A lot of people get sick when they increase mileage.  It's a shock to the system.  Taking a week off isn't going to impact your training.  Running when you are sick or injured might.  That's the advice i got, but that doesn't mean it's easy though.  I felt guilty as hell sleeping for 14 hours yesterday and not running, and seeing as it will most likely be a repeat tonight, you can expect my blog to be very lame this week.  But, i feel confident that i will rebound and be back to training in a week (or whenever i feel human again)  :)