Maybe Getting Sick is a Good Thing

For the first time in a long while, I'm sick.  Glands are swollen, voice is strained, always sounding on-edge, and I'm exhausted.  It's been coming for a few days now, but hit full force yesterday.  In the morning I got up and went to the gym anyway, spending about thirty minutes on a stair-stepper type machine.  I hate those machines, but my left foot is hamburger and needed some time to recover.  When I got off the machine, I was a little light-headed.  I should've slept in!

I hurt my foot by a combination of a running the half marathon and then six days later running hard at a 5K.  It's nothing structural, but a sore foot really hurts! My miles were never significant enough for the half marathon and my feet just weren't quite ready.  Since I'm new to running I decided to learn to run in toe-shoes or minimal shoes.  It takes a while for the feet, just like the rest of the body, to be ready to withstand the pounding of running.  The picture is my award for first in age group on the 5K.  I left the race before the awards ceremony and the race coordinator was nice enough to mail it to me.  

Anyhow, by yesterday afternoon I had nothing left.  I skipped my planned ride.  I took Nyquil and went to bed early, then slept in as late as possible while leaving enough time to make it to work.  Today I took it easy and grabbed a good nap this afternoon, instead of this afternoon's ride.

So that's 3 of five days without exercise now.  Ugh.  Yeah, I'm sick, but man, I want to get out there.  I did get one great ride in on Tuesday.  It was my first hard ride on my new bike.  The bike is light and fast, but I had only been able to do some short, easy rides.

The route I took normally requires two hours, the fastest ever being 1:56.  I did it on the new bike, while being a little sick, in 1:46!  Man, buyer's remorse ... gone.

Today at work I'm just administering finals, which provided me ample opportunity to read up on running while sick.  The rule I read said, "Neck up, go ahead.  Sick neck down (chest), don't run."

Well, I've got a head cold and just a little bit of a cough, so I think I'm okay to exercise.  But then my foot is still pretty sore, though improving.  I can walk without a limp but under the toes is tender and the top of the foot is still sore.

So perhaps sleeping in (I run in the early mornings, ride in the afternoons) to recover from the cold will have the more important benefit of allowing my foot to recover.