Karen writes: Stay in bed or run or stay in bed or...
Saturday night I set the alarm for 5am to have an early breakfast before the Sunday long run. I was awake long before this, coughing, sneezing, swigging water for my sore throat. It's a head-cold, just a minor bug, but...what happens if it is really my body trying to tell me to take a rest...what happens if I make it worse and have to stop training for DAYS...what happens if I am really just being a wimp and trying to get out of training...what if...
The old 'above the neck' rule is the test, quick assessment, yep, thoroughly miserable but all symptoms above the neck, no temperature, so I got up and had breakfast, cleaned my teeth, reset the alarm for 7, and went back to bed. 7.30am, no new and more convincing excuses have arisen, out the door, thinking that if I felt really awful I could come home, the first half hour to get to Tepuru only felt moderately awful, in fact the further I ran the better I felt. My throat had gone numb, my hanky was suffering from overuse, but running itself felt pretty good. After the hard workout on the cycle the previous day I had expected protests from the legs, not a whimper. With two other runners I ended up doing a short version of the Maraetai forest route, it was lovely, we had to take it easy because one of the runners was stretching out her distances and that was probably a good thing for me, the forest trails were cool after the hot tarseal and when we got out of the forest I kept going quite happily to finish up around 20km.
Home, shower, off to the nephew's 5th birthday party, ate all the wrong foods and didn't drink enough water, and with 20/20 hindsight came to thinking that probably that run wasn't the most sensible thing I've done recently. I drooped home, and spent the afternoon feeling sorry for myself, not quite able to sleep, not feeling alert enough to do anything, yuck. Thank goodness the girls are old enough to entertain themselves a bit more these days if their mum's brain goes on holiday occasionally.
Monday the bike goes to the shop for the aerobars. I should say 'perhaps', I have planned to do this a number of times and always had legitimate reasons (excuses) for coming out of the shop without the things in place. I tell myself that it will really happen this time, I'm ready to grow up and be a proper triathlete, and of course if I hate them I can always take them off again before Ironman and hide them under the desk or something before anyone notices. I sigh as I look at the mess from Saturdays race on the poor old bike, road grime, dirty chain, drink spatters, most of that is explainable. What might not be so explainable is the series of bits of sandwich crust jammed under one of the auxiliary brake levers, now I remember what happened, the bit of rubber holding it fell out on the bumpy roads at Hunua and the thing rattled and rattled and all I had was sandwich to silence it...better clean that up before it gets to the shop!
The old 'above the neck' rule is the test, quick assessment, yep, thoroughly miserable but all symptoms above the neck, no temperature, so I got up and had breakfast, cleaned my teeth, reset the alarm for 7, and went back to bed. 7.30am, no new and more convincing excuses have arisen, out the door, thinking that if I felt really awful I could come home, the first half hour to get to Tepuru only felt moderately awful, in fact the further I ran the better I felt. My throat had gone numb, my hanky was suffering from overuse, but running itself felt pretty good. After the hard workout on the cycle the previous day I had expected protests from the legs, not a whimper. With two other runners I ended up doing a short version of the Maraetai forest route, it was lovely, we had to take it easy because one of the runners was stretching out her distances and that was probably a good thing for me, the forest trails were cool after the hot tarseal and when we got out of the forest I kept going quite happily to finish up around 20km.
Home, shower, off to the nephew's 5th birthday party, ate all the wrong foods and didn't drink enough water, and with 20/20 hindsight came to thinking that probably that run wasn't the most sensible thing I've done recently. I drooped home, and spent the afternoon feeling sorry for myself, not quite able to sleep, not feeling alert enough to do anything, yuck. Thank goodness the girls are old enough to entertain themselves a bit more these days if their mum's brain goes on holiday occasionally.
Monday the bike goes to the shop for the aerobars. I should say 'perhaps', I have planned to do this a number of times and always had legitimate reasons (excuses) for coming out of the shop without the things in place. I tell myself that it will really happen this time, I'm ready to grow up and be a proper triathlete, and of course if I hate them I can always take them off again before Ironman and hide them under the desk or something before anyone notices. I sigh as I look at the mess from Saturdays race on the poor old bike, road grime, dirty chain, drink spatters, most of that is explainable. What might not be so explainable is the series of bits of sandwich crust jammed under one of the auxiliary brake levers, now I remember what happened, the bit of rubber holding it fell out on the bumpy roads at Hunua and the thing rattled and rattled and all I had was sandwich to silence it...better clean that up before it gets to the shop!
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