Week 17 – Powered by Mucinex

We run to undo the damage we’ve done to body and spirit. We run to find some part of ourselves yet undiscovered.” ~ John Bingham

As I’m starting this blog post I’ve completed the first two runs of this week and they did not feel good, but they did feel doable. I googled if I should run while sick – google is uncertain. Have I been to the doctor? Sort of. I gave teladoc a try – they very helpfully said, ‘Oh you don’t sound good, but we can’t help you. Try urgent care.’ Will I do that? We’ll see. I’m not anti-doctor or anti-medicine, but I am pro be sure you need an antibiotic before you take one. So for now I’ll continue to manage symptoms and if there is no improvement in the next few days I’ll head to urgent care. Oh, I did try to get into my doctor, but with my symptoms they said I needed a virtual appt and the first one available is a week out. If I’m not improving by then I’ll give urgent care a try.

And now I’ve finished all the runs for this week. I did have some improvement going into the weekend – I would say I was at 50% for my long run. Thankfully, my long run was only 3.5 miles – so not so long.

I am a little nervous going into week 18. I officially start my marathon block and it feels like that comes with a bit of an escalation. Up until this point I have been running 3 days a week, strength training 2 days a week, and resting 2 days a week. I will be adding another day of running and a day of cross training. I’ll also be adding strength training to my running days. It feels like a lot and I had gotten a bit in my head about it. But when I really think about it, it’s not really an increase in mileage since I have been walking on my rest days. I just need to increase intensity so one of those walks becomes a run, but I think I can do that slowly. My upcoming long run is 6 miles – almost twice what I did this week, but I did a 10k earlier this month so I know I can do it. I’ve convinced myself I can do this, and I think that is half the battle.