Monday – I had the day off and lazed around spending most of the day reading a book. I woke up with a sore throat and I could feel some mucus dripping from my nasal passages causing the discomfort. Slightly concerned I might be getting sick. After popping some vitamins and eating breakfast I began to feel better. Perhaps it's nothing to worry about. Anyway, I decided to do a 4 mile run around Diamond Head at an easy pace later in the day. Don't want to push too hard in case I am getting sick and because I don't want to re-aggravate my back. Even with those things in mind the run was brutal, in fact it sucked. I didn't enjoy it. My legs felt heavy, my ankles were constantly sore, and my left ankle – which is my good ankle – popped over and over again throughout the run. I ran at what felt like a 8:30 to 9 min per mile pace, which is well below what I should normally cruise at. Given the slow pace and how I felt, something very profound, very prodigious, and very dangerous crept into my mind: doubt.
What if I fail? What if I don't make my time goal? What if I don't heal well enough to perform? What if I do heal and I'm simply not good enough? Unrelenting, unforgiving doubt. These things and more plagued my mind during the latter part of the run and stayed with me well after. What's the point? Why even train? My joints feel busted and strained, my legs feel like they can't carry my weight. What's the point if I'm only going to deteriorate further and further? I'm getting older so it's all downhill anyway. Why do anything? I should just retreat into a burrow and let the world and everybody in it pass by ignorant to their inescapable doom...yep all that muck grew out from one twinge of doubt. What a poisonous thing...
The rest of the week I'll just call “Attack of the Vog.” For those who don't know, vog is like volcanic smog caused from volcanic ash. One thing about Hawaii that doesn't happen in very many other places is there's an active volcano on the Big Island and when the winds are just right volcanic ash and gas covers the state. The air becomes hazy and gray...kinda like Los Angeles. Anyway, like many others, vog wreaks havoc on my lungs and sinuses. It's why I had a sore throat on Monday, which I'm sure wasn't made any better by running.
I spent the rest of the week feeling sick and medicated. Tuesday through Thursday I had a sore throat and my nose was going crazy. Friday the congestion began and I spent the weekend coughing up all sorts of goodness. No workouts, needless to say. I did some stretching for about forty minutes on Thursday. A blend of static stretches and yoga stretches. I did more stretches again on Sunday for about an hour. I don't know why I don't stretch more often. There's a good hour or two each day I spend just vegging out with the TV and computer on, not really doing anything. I could at least stretch out a bit.
All in all, the week sucked for training. I'm still recovering from the vog attack and I continue to stretch my lower back. At least I got plenty of rest this week (Nyquil helped with that). And that doubt thing...well let's try not to have another episode of that again...so debilitating. While I think the doubt has waned it has been replaced with the reality that the Great Aloha Run is less than a month away and I'm not training as I should be to hit my mark. Hopefully health finds me this week and I can get back to training.
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