The Flu and 9.2 miles.

What a weekend.  After a pretty normal day on Friday, I woke up Saturday morning feeling nauseous, dizzy and achy.  I ended up staying in bed the entire day, I could barely move my body at all.  It was awful.  What made it worse was that my husband and a couple of my kids have been fighting a terrible chest cold and nasty cough, and I felt bad I couldn't do more to help take care of them.  I was glad when I woke up Sunday morning feeling slightly better, at least the severe aching in my joints and muscles had lessened and I wasn't as sick to my stomach.  I was actually able to eat a few things, which slowly helped me feel stronger.  By the time I went to bed last night, I was feeling optimistic I might be feeling well enough to work out this morning, but I wasn't sure how much strength and energy I'd have.  After all, I had only consumed about 600-700 calories for a 48 hour period.  That's not too good.

So this morning I did about 45 minutes of Pilates after I got the kids' school lunches made, then once the kids were off to school, I decided to go ahead and try to run.  The sun was out, the high's supposed to be around 65 today, so I wore just a tank top and some capris and figured I'd be fine.  Yikes.  The wind was blowing - hard.  I should have known better.  My arms and hands felt frozen.  I did a 9.2 mile loop, and thankfully the 2nd half of the loop heads back towards the sun, so I was able to defrost a bit.  I ran slowly, doing a 4:1 run/walk ratio.  My average pace was only around 11:50 min/mile, but I was just happy to get out there and do something.  That was my first run back out on the road since I ran 26.2 one week ago.  I had done a bit of running on the treadmill and of course all my other workouts, but there's nothing like being out on the road.

On another note, this was today's Runner's World Quote of the day:
(Why does it not surprise me that the creator of the world's best vacuum cleaner is also a runner.  Hmmm.  Oh, how I love a good vacuum and a clean carpet.  A Dyson is on my forever "want list"!)

Running focuses my mind and allows me to think around a subject. I still need a workshop to make discoveries, but on a run I might think of a new avenue to explore. Another thing I learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you're hurting like crazy. The moment you should accelerate is the moment you're the most tired. I found that to be so in life as well. ~ Sir James Dyson, founder and chief engineer of Dyson