Beauty Sleep

Yesterday I had to spend the day at my company's offices in Stamford, CT attending a meeting. On Wednesday I started getting an occasional cough. It wasn't a hacking cough or anything like that, just one cough every once in a while. Otherwise I felt fine. To prevent the motion sickness I tend to get on high speed trains (I took the Acela from Baltimore up to Stamford), I also took the "Non-Drowsy" version of Dramamine the night before. In the past, I've taken it the day before and slept through the grogginess it produces for the first few hours. However, when I woke up yesterday I felt miserably drowsy. My cough had gotten a tad worse and my throat was just slightly sore, so all in all this was not going to be a fun day. Oh, and it was like 25 degrees out with a 15 mph wind. Awesome.

I felt out of it the entire day and didn't even begin to feel more with it until last evening after I got back from CT. However, sitting on a train for 6 hours, and in meetings for 3 hours or more, didn't make my body feel all that good and I ached all over. I went to the store and got myself some cough syrup for the cough and throat (my throat hadn't gotten any sorer, which is good news) and then took that and an Alka Seltzer Cold when I got home. Luckily I still have much of my medicine from the last time I got sick, which was about this time last year, actually, so I was prepared. I ate some soup and pasta and laid on the couch to recuperate. Before going to bed I took some Alka Seltzer Nighttime Cold relief, which knocks you out so I was able to sleep pretty well.

Thank God I had already scheduled to take this day off from work weeks ago before that meeting was scheduled. I think I would have felt worse after working a day. However, I woke up this morning and didn't feel any worse...granted I didn't feel markedly better either. But my cold has not progressed. In fact, my cough is gone, save for a few here and there, and my throat, while still slightly tender, hasn't gotten worse either. My main ailment is my back, which is killing me! I think that this has more to do with the seats on the train and in the meeting than any sickness. I've been on ibuprofen since this morning and that keeps the back pain away. I spent most of the day sleeping, though, as I was tired! And for some reason I woke up at 7:30 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. Then I fell back asleep on the couch around 9:30 and slept until almost 1, so I'm not 100% yet, obviously.

All this is by way of saying that I think I am going to postpone my 7 miler until tomorrow, when I am fairly confident that I will be feeling up to it. The last thing I want is to go out running and then come back with a worse cold than I did when I left. I was sorely tempted to just head out and run since I don't feel all that bad, but much of what ails me is in my chest, and I really have no desire to get bronchitis three weeks before the National Half Marathon. This way I think I can do 7 tomorrow morning, then hit my 11 mile long run on Sunday and not risk getting really ill. I don't like to put a long run next to any run longer than 3-4 miles, but this week it can't be helped since I didn't run yesterday morning (too cold and windy and I had to catch my train at 7:30) or Wednesday (I thought it would be better weather on Thursday...thanks weather guy!). I need to get those miles in to continue to build endurance.

With that, I'm going to decide whether it's better to go back to sleep or to get a shower and actually go outside...I'm leaning towards sleep though. I may treat myself to Burger King for dinner since you're supposed to feed a cold. There are few things better to feed a cold than a Chicken Tendercrisp, large fries, Diet Coke and a Whopper Jr with cheese. MMMmmmmm.