Starting this week, I hope to be more regular with my blogging...we are finally getting internet hooked up in our house, so I won't have to take two-week breaks between each post!
All that you've missed is that I was sick AGAIN. It happened the week after I ran the 20 miles, so I think it had something to do with my immune system being lowered after a long run, as well as the change in weather. One of the big benefits I used to see from my regular workout routine was that I was rarely sick. In the course of 2years, I only took a half day off work for being sick. That's all changed in the past month. Today is the first day in the past two weeks that I can actually say I feel good. I didn't spend the entire night coughing, and I was able to talk through my whole hour of spin class. I've armed myself with Mucinex, Airborne, and One-a-Day Vita-Craves with "immune booster."
I always say that I get the lamest and most obscure injuries, but it's really true. Last Saturday, I started to get this pain around my right lung from the constant coughing and it got progressively worse throughout the next week. Finally, by Thursday, I was getting in my car to leave for work, and had a pretty hard coughing attack...and something popped. It was somewhere in the vicinity of my lung/rib cage, (so probably an intercostal muscle) and shooting pain went all around my chest and arm. I could barely hold the steering wheel with my right hand. I even had to ask Chad to help me roll over in bed that night. Pathetic. It's finally subsided now after 4 days, but I still have to limit my strength training and be careful about the arm swing during running.
Exercise, running in particular, is such a bell curve when it comes to the benefits that you reap from it. We all know if you get too little exericse, you're at risk for obesity, heart disease, high stress, etc. But, on the flip side, when you get too much, and I mean really too much, you weaken your immune system and set yourself up for upper-respiratory infections, over-use injuries in the muscles and joints, etc. It goes hand-in-hand with the enjoyment factor of exercise: if you don't workout for long enough, you never get in the "zone" and feel the stress-relieving hormones kick in. But push it for too long, and your body is just screaming STOP.
All I know is that I am now counting down the days until Nov. 6th...that's right, the day after the marathon. I'm slowly losing my motviation to train--I skipped my long run yesterday because it was a cold, rainy Sunday and I was exhausted after a busy Saturday of a huge work event followed by our housewarming party. I'm going to make it up this week (it was only supposed to be a 6-miler), but I just want to fast-forward and be able to say that it's all over.
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