Sick Of Being Sick

Three weeks ago I started training for the Grandma’s Marathon in June. The first week was capped off by a long run of 10 miles. That was the last run that I did. Here’s why.

This past winter has been an extremely cold one. Even by Minnesota standards. Normal high temperatures for this time of year are around 25 to 27 degrees. During my first week of training, we only had a couple of days where the temperature reached positive numbers. One morning I ran 3 miles when the temperature was -14 degrees.

After weeks of temperatures this cold, your perception of what you call a “warm” day gets warped.When it came time to head out on my first long run I checked the temperature. Was it going to be below zero again? Nope, it was a balmy 11 degrees above zero. NICE! It’s so warm that I won’t even need a face mask. In all of my years of winter running I have always had a rule: “If the temperature is under 20 degrees, wear a face mask”.

The run went great except that my cheeks were completely numb by the 7 mile mark. I finished the run and took a nice warm shower and felt great. The next morning however, it was obvious with seconds of opening my eyes that I had caught a cold. It ended up being one of the worst colds that I ever had and I had to take the entire week off of running. A week later, I was back to about 90% but still had a sore throat, a cough and my voice was gone. I took the next week off. Of the first 3 weeks of the training program, I have run 1 and am really depressed. I refuse to go out and run unless the temperature is in the 30’s. A treadmill might be in my future but I just can’t imagine the boredom of running for 2 hours on a treadmill.

My new mantra is “health over fitness”. Training hard is worthless if it causes you to get sick or injured. Train hard but never let it compromise your health.