In sickness and in health

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!

I am trying to stay positive through all of this. At least I’m not injured. I have a wonderful new fiancé and our wedding to plan; a lovely new house to make into our ideal home; a big family Christmas to look forward to and a lot of good friends around me. I have much to be thankful for. I will get better, and sooner rather than later if I am sensible. Can I be sensible? I can but try.

No running pics this time round, just a happy memory: Matt and I on the cliffs in Cornwall, just after we got engaged. :-)