Getting Sick

I certainly didn't have the most fun training last week. Everything was going pretty well until I woke up Thursday morning with a scratchy throat and more tired then normal. I struggled through my morning workout session on the bike and only made it a couple hours at work before I could hardly keep my eyes open. I spent the remainder of the day at home sleeping. I ended up cancelling my weekly lunch time run on Thursday as well as all 3 workouts on Friday.

I still wasn't feeling well on Saturday but didn't want to skip my long run. I ended up heading out to Saylorville in the early afternoon to get 13 miles in. At about 6 miles in I decided to cut the run short and finished at 8 miles with absolutely no energy left. I made up the remaining 5 miles on Sunday morning and was very glad to be feeling better. It certainly isn't ideal to miss out on any training, but it is probably better to have this happen now then it would be in a few weeks.

It is interesting to me that the longer that I get into this journey, the more that my perception changes. When I started 4 years ago, running for even a mile felt like a long run. A year later I would say that anything over 3 or 4 miles is what I would classify as a long training run. Last year that distance increased to 5 - 6 miles and so far this year, I would say that same threshold for me is around 8 miles. I guess it makes sense when I think about it as my training and race distances have increased consistently over that time frame as well. I guess it is just another way to measure progress along the way. The reason that I bring this up is that starting this week, my mid-week pace run has increased to 8 miles. For me, that takes a little less then 1 1/2 hours which is a considerable amount of time (and effort) to put in on a week day. It is also one of the things that I love about running. No matter how good you get at it, there is always room for improvement.