I haven’t been feeling well for the past few days. At first I thought I was just tired from waking up early day after day to run, but then I realized I was just sick. I didn’t have a fever but felt achy and very, very tired. I was so tired that I spent most of Friday sleeping and was still tired when I went to sleep at 10:30 p.m.
A few weeks ago I’d registered for a Saturday morning 10k race and had changed my entire running schedule for the week so I could try to run a good race, maybe even break my personal record set last May (45:10). I ran my long run for the week on Wednesday morning (19 miles) and on Friday, when all I could do was sleep, and all signs (and Jessica) said no race for you tomorrow, I felt frustrated and decided I would give it a try anyway.
So Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m., feeling bad, I dragged myself up and out of bed, had some coffee, and got dressed and ready for the race. My blood sugar was 132 which was fine. At 7:30 my friend picked me up. At 8:20 we went out for a two mile warm up. I felt weak, but as my body warmed up I felt like I thought I could do it – not break a record, but I was going to complete the race.
The race started at 8:45 and I started off at a good pace, running with the 45 minutes pacer, but after two miles I felt like I needed to slow down a bit. I continued running at a good pace feeling a little weak, but better than I had expected. The last two miles were hard and I had to slow down some more. I tried to push myself, but really didn’t have it in me. I did, however, manage to speed up a bit towards the finish line.
I didn’t break my personal record or even get close, but I ran a good race breaking my course record (third time there) with a nice 47:08. The best thing about the race was that after it was over and I drank some water I felt better than I had for days. And to tell you the truth, sometimes it’s nice to be able to blame a virus, and not diabetes, for screwing up my run.
(May be all I needed was to run a little more.)
This week I kicked off my official marathon training. I ran a total of 52 miles.
*photo by Ofri Miller
