Week 7: Running, I thee wed, in sickness and in health...

Everything started out okay this week until Tuesday...

(Monday, 8 October)
AM: lifted just about everything in the weight room; but I warmed up on the bike so that I wouldn't waste any precious running miles this week on weightlifting class. Definitely showing improvement already!

PM: Relatively fast Huntingson. Legs okay. Feeling antisocial and irritable. Probably should have taken it a little easier.

(Tuesday, 9 October)
AM: Fartlek workout. We started from Lacy and did an 800 there at a little faster than 7 minute pace. Then a few (3) 400 - 600s up to another longer (800-900m) interval going up Marengo to Glenarm. My legs didn't feel quick today, but I tried to make up for it with mental effort.

PM: I'm starting to get sick. That sore throat I always get is sneaking in, I can tell when I swallow. Goddamn.

(Wednesday, 10 October)
AM: Lifted really easy this morning. Feeling decent, but sore throat persists even worse than last night.

PM: Easy run down by Garfield. Didn't really enjoy it though, because I'm stressed out by escalating sickness. Didn't get a nap in today like I wanted.

(Thursday, 11 October)
Stayed up too late last night working on pie, and then I had weird dreams all night. In one of them I was in a Viking ship caravan sailing across some immense ocean. For some reason, I fell off a boat and almost got left behind along with some other person. The other person was, of course, Pamela Anderson. We're swimming like crazy after the last boat trying to catch up so we don't get left and I'm like, "WTF? Why aren't you a better swimmer? Didn't you learn how to handle situations like this from your years on Baywatch?!" and she was like, "no, I didn't actually swim that much". And then we got on the back ship and it was okay. But still, it was weird.

Took it really, really easy on our workout. Did a little tempo thing at Lacy where we did the outside street loop, the inside 800m loop, and finished with the 700 loop at race pace. Was happy to hang back with Best. Definitely feeling the lack of oxygen due to massive amounts of snot.

(Friday, 12 October)
Not feeling great today, but not feeling worse either. Hillcrest loop prerace. Still feeling congested and grumpy.

(Saturday, 13 October)
Bah, I don't want to write about this race. I felt pretty bad for the whole race, went out in 6.40 or so which felt way worse than 6.40, then was in 2 miles at ~14.10 with all that mud and crap. At that point I was still okay, but then around 3/4 of a mile to go I got the *worst* cramp of my life. It was awful. (It was around 20 .30 out). At first I just grabbed it and tried to breathe, but pretty soon I couldn't breathe and then I couldn't run, and then I could barely walk. Everyone was passing me and saying stuff to me and it just made me more and more upset, until I got into where all the fans were, and then EVERYONE was yelling at me and it was just so overwhelming and humiliating. Plus it seemed like everyone was there - PB&J, Wendell, D'Auria, Ian, Mark... Anyways I was like crying and holding my side and trying to get control back. It was rough. Once I got out of the crowd I got to the point where I could breathe a little and swing my right arm again, and then I was able to kind of jog back in to finish the race. Then I spent the rest of the day kind of moping about it and feeling sorry for myself.

But hey, you learn a lot more from the hard days than from the easy days, right?

(Sunday, 14 October)
Swam a bit, worked a bit. Side hurts from yesterday, it's like some psycho charlie horse.