Thoughts on the Run

1:12:20 – 7.25 miles

Yes, 7.25 is a strange distance to run on a treadmill. Let me tell you how I came to that distance.

Over the weekend I was scheduled to run an easy 16 miles. Last week was a professionally challenging one. I was dealing with inter-team tension that I didn’t know existed. What made it even more interesting, was that apparently I caused the tension.

Sidenote: A week later and I still don’t know the root cause.

All of the back and forth, implied failures on my team, and still no acknowledgment that someone through a stone without realizing they may have been part of the problem, led to being run down. Oh yeah, I still have wife and 4 kids that demand (that’s a nice way of saying it) my attention. Come Friday night, I had swollen glands and scratchy throat. Suckiness. I decided to try and sleep it off, but was unable to sleep much.

Saturday was up early, making breakfast, cleaning the house, playing outside, carting kids to dance and gymnastics class, and then dinner. Apparently I passed out for 30 minutes on the couch which made another difficult night of sleep. Getting up early didn’t seem wise on little sleep and feeling worse.

So that brings us to Monday. The start of a new week which means the start to implementing solutions … or at least as much as I can control. Even though I was still feeling like ick in the head and throat, I awoke at 4a and headed into the gym at the office.

There are only 3 of us that seem to use the gym before 8a at our office and one of the guys was there. I climbed on the treadmill and cranked my Scottish rock band music while he went and did his thing. About an hour later he was done and it was just me, my music, and the news on tv.

My goal was to go 9 miles and push the pace a bit more. I picked the wrong day to do that.

Around mile 7 I began to feel woozy. I was sipping water about every 5 minutes so it shouldn’t have been that. At mile 7.25 I did the head physically spin around and felt like someone shot a flamethrower at me. Now, I ignore the signs of pain and discomfort from my body all the time, but this seemed like the next level of signs. Take it down to a walk. Did so for another .25 mile and stepped off the treadmill.

Rest? No, I went over and did a circuit of lifting weights. Body will not defeat brain.