Being Sick

I hate being sick. I'm not good at it at all. Well, actually I suppose considering the amount of times I've been sick, you could probably say that I am quite good at it.

Ever since I was a kid, I've always seemed to get sick pretty often, and usually accompanied with a high fever. Maybe I just have a weak immune system, maybe it's a result of having meningitis when I was a baby, or maybe it's just horse shit bad luck. Then, I was diagnosed with Stevens Johnson's Syndrome in my teens, but thankfully I have been able to control that by taking the proper medication at the first sign of any symptoms.

Actually, over the past few years I have been healthier than any other time in my life, in fact I can't remember the last time I had a cold. And this is all during fairly high mileage training too.

I've made a point of really trying to take care of the little things with lots of rest, eating well, low stress and I have also paid close attention to adding some supplements to my regular routine. Interestingly enough, I have not had a bout of SJS since I started taking First Endurance Optygen. The two main ingredients in Optygen are Cordyceps and Rhodiola, which were first used by Tibetan Sherpas to help them climb Mount Everest, but have been used recently to aid in recovery and performance in endurance events. I've also added Udo's Oil to my daily diet as well.

So, I was somewhat surprised to come down with a nasty cold last week. As Sara told me, it was a perfect storm brewing. It was the week following my ill fated Virgil Crest race where I dropped at 25miles. I guess that I maybe thought that this didn't take too much out of me as I was keen to get back into training after a few easy days. I also had a busy week with quite a few appointments and being around a lot of sick people when I am used to mostly working from home and in isolation. I think the kicker was an eye appointment I had at a very busy clinic which was probably a germ factory.

The short story is that I got nailed hard for all of last week. Most of my running consisted of 20-30 minutes of very easy running each day, just to keep the streak alive. My fever spiked pretty high for a few days and lingered in my chest a bit. The fever left me pretty weak, all week.

By the weekend things were improving considerably, as I've felt much better and started to increase back again closer to normal. I had planned to run long on Sunday, but decided to bump that back to Monday (yesterday) for the extra day of recovery.

With a busy week coming up with organizing the Sydenham Fall Trail Run this coming weekend, I guess if you have to get sick, then last week was a good time.

Here's hoping to a healthy fall and winter, and being able to really ramp up the trail miles!

Weekly Summary (Oct 4-10):
Total # of hours last week: 4:46
Total # of hours this year: 435:46
Streak (# of consecutive days of running): 7,594
Training Log Details for the Week

The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn by The Pogues. An amazing song that fuses Punk with Traditional Irish Music. Great to see that The Pogues can still play it with passion 25 years later.