I like the titles of my blog posts to have a duplicity of
meanings and this one certainly does not disappoint. The most obvious
reference, and the most negative one, is to me having spent most of November
ill with glandular fever. A more positive spin on the title is that it
represents the words you utter during a marriage ceremony, which is quite
befitting given that Matt and I just got engaged at the end of October and are
currently planning our wedding for July next year.
I wasn’t feeling great before half term, in October. If I
had rested early on, I’d probably be fine now. But I didn’t. I carried on
training and racing through it. Since then I have picked up cold after cold
after cold; four of them, in as many weeks. I know the sage advice is to rest
when you are ill, and I do try, but I have to confess that my patience for
resting starts to wear thin after day two of doing nothing. I didn’t feel great
when I ran the Templer 10 and after doing it I got much worse: crazy huh?!
Who’d’a thought that racing 10 miles
on a head-cold doesn’t top the list of the best recommended cold and flu remedies?! I started to improve after
a week, no doubt because I was forced to take it easy as my legs were so
wrecked, but then, a few days later, I got yet another cold and just in time for
the Drogo – terrific. Flying in the face of wisdom, I decided to run the Drogo on this cold. Even as I type this I can
see my mistakes; I can hear myself telling other people in my position to
listen to their bodies, to rest, not to race etc. I do tell myself the same
stuff; the problem is, in the next breath, I sooth myself with flattering unctions in order to believe that it will be alright: it’s just a snivel; hell, if I back off every time I don’t feel 100% I’ll never run; I’m tougher than this; staying in bed with a Lemsip
and day-time TV is for lesser mortals. Back and forth, back and forth, this
internal debate rages in my head. Do I run? Don’t I? It nearly always ends up being the former.
Unfortunately, and much to my annoyance, in the end, the
body always gets its own way. If I keep trying to placate it with pseudo promises
of rest that are never delivered, it eventually wizens up to this and realises
that if it wants the rest, it will have to do something drastic to ensure it
gets it. It is around about this point that my body tends to give up on me, in an alarmingly spectacular fashion: ‘screw you; I ain’t takin’ any more of this crap’. It did
it to me after the Snowdonia Marathon, which I decided to run whilst on
antibiotics for a urinary tract infection. Its way of paying me back for this particular
bout of abuse was to turn this into a full-blown kidney infection that landed
me in Yeovil hospital on a drip for four days. This time, its revenge for
making it run with glandular fever was to make me go ‘splat’ whilst out on a
club run; an evening which also culminated in a little trip to the hospital. I must
add in here that I don’t go out of my way to inflict abuse on my body like
this; I’m not a masochist! I didn’t know I was suffering with glandular fever
when I decided to run. I thought I was just a little "under the weather", and other such platitudes. Just a
soppy-southerner who always feels the cold. I genuinely believe, every time,
that I’ll be alright and that I can get away with it. I am invariably shocked
to discover that, actually, I’m not as invincible as I might like to think. In
all seriousness, I’d like to say a huge thanks to the SWRR 8m/m group who
looked after me so well, particularly to John and Jim who stayed with me. I was
lucky it happened when I was out with them and not up on Haldon on my own, in
the dark, with a head torch. That could have ended very differently…
The past few days I have finally started to feel better.
I’ve managed to get through the day without needing to put the heat on in the
house – a miracle in itself! I’m not needing to go to bed at 8pm and have 12 hours sleep simply in order to
function the next day. I’ve got more energy; I’m looking slightly less like a
walking-talking corpse. It’s all good. NOW is the time I need to be careful.
NOW is the time I risk starting to overdo things again. The internal debate – ‘you
still need to take it easy; if you want to have a successful 2015, you need to
rest now’ versus ‘you lazy sod, you haven’t trained properly for weeks; how are
you going to hope to be competitive in the races you’ve planned for the New
Year by loafing about on the sofa swilling tea all day? Get your arse out
there’ – has started in earnest. To try and assuage the guilt that comes with
being on light training, I have deleted myself from Strava. That site might be
good for a lot of things but it isn’t good for an ill or injured and yet still
fiercely competitive runner who needs no encouragement to overstep their limits. I don’t need to know that my rivals are putting in 70 mile weeks, including intervals,
hills and tempo sessions right now. I need to do my own thing and not be
influenced by any external forces: my internal forces are virulent enough!
No running pics this time round, just a happy memory: Matt and I on the cliffs in Cornwall, just after we got engaged. :-)
