Pneumonia Hiatus

Grrrrr.  Arrgh. 

Well, it looks like it's going to be a while before I'm running or doing much of anything again.  Right now walking down the hallway is leaving me breathless.  I found out on Tuesday that I have pneumonia after a weekend of being horribly sick.  It took me a while to realize that I was actually sick though.  Maybe it's because the symptoms were vague, maybe it's because I made some stupid decisions, maybe it's because I procrastinate going to the doctor too much.  Probably all of those things.  But here's why things were so shady...

Last week we bought a pool to put up in our backyard.  Nothing fancy, just one of those do-it-yourself type things but it's a big deal to us and especially to our kids.  The first step in setting this up is making sure you level the ground where you're going to put the pool.  With Wifey's crazy schedule, unless I wanted to wait for her help on the weekends and have this project take forever I knew it fell to me to deal with during the week.  And let's face it - it's mid/end July - there's not a ton of summer left so if we're enjoying this thing it has to go up soon!

I don't know if you remember last week or not, but this was the forecast, and I think the actual temps were even higher than predicted:

So I spent every day that week outside pulling up grass & weeds and leveling the ground.  It doesn't sound like it would be much work but it WAS!!  Those grass & weeds had some deep roots to be pulled up and that weather was H-O-T!  I set the kids up in the kiddie pool that we've had so that I could do the work outside & keep my eye on them, and also so I could keep myself cool on breaks.  I knew it was hot, I knew we were in a heat advisory, and I made sure that I was drinking a lot of water and some Gatorade to keep those electrolytes up.  I took plenty of water breaks and pool breaks and out of the sun breaks and come Thursday I had cleared the area we would be setting up the pool in.  Yay!  But I felt like I had been through the wringer.  4 days of hard work in pretty intense heat was getting to me.  I was slow on Thursday, I took more breaks than I had to any day before that, I just didn't have any more energy left.  So I took Friday off & took the kids to a friend's house. 

But on Saturday Wifey was home so I wanted to take advantage of her being here to help lug and empty the fifteen 50 lb bags of sand we had to put on the leveled ground.  I should mention here that on Friday night I imbibed quite a bit on some very delicious double chocolate stout.  Not the smartest decision I ever made but we all need a night to let loose once in a while, right?  And I worked hard all week so I deserved a night of fun.  I should also mention that at the beginning of the evening I felt like I had a sunburn even thought I didn't have the slightest trace of one.  Chocked it up to the beginning "warm" phase of alcohol and didn't think about it again.  However, this is where I believe my fever may have started.  So when I woke up on Saturday sluggish & dehydrated I wasn't all that surprised.  So I got some food in me, drank a lot of water, had some caffeine, and got myself in what I thought was pretty decent shape before we got outside back into the heat.

The second we got started I knew something was off.  At first I was thinking it was just dehydration from the hangover but I had felt relatively OK by the time we went outside.  But once we started working I was super sluggish & needed a break about every 10 minutes.  Clearly I still needed fluids but I also started feeling like I was completely worn down and couldn't catch my breath, similar to how I felt during the 4th Of July 5K, but at least that made sense to me.  This wasn't that much work and I was dripping with sweat and panting like I had just run 2 miles.  Sure Wifey was sweaty too but it was pouring off of me unnecessarily and she was barely glistening.  I was struggling, I felt a headache coming on, I couldn't catch my breath, it was horrible.  I pushed though (taking many, many breaks) and I got the pool set up & filling with water.

By the time we came inside & showered and started talking about dinner I knew something was off but I couldn't figure it out.  Nothing really went together;  I was just overall blah, I was still dripping with sweat and couldn't catch my breath right away.  It felt like my heart was beating out of my chest at about a million miles an hour but I assumed I just overdid it for the day and that I was probably dehydrated from both the drinking the night before and now the day of work I put in.  Add in the week that I just had and I assumed it was all just catching up with me.  I was hoping a lot of fluids and some rest would help me out. I took it super easy the rest of the night, Wifey put both kids to bed and I myself went to bed soon after. 

Sunday was no better - I woke up tired and with a headache.  Luckily we didn't have any real work to do.  We had to finish filling the pool with water and start running the filter, all things within my capabilities, or so I thought at the time.  But whenever I stood up I was dizzy, I started having blurry vision on and off, the headache I woke up with got worse, and now there was a burning sensation in my lungs and a crazy cough that I couldn't describe because it wasn't a throat tickle cough but more like a lung spasm cough if that makes any sense to you.  I also had cramps & aches everywhere in my neck and back.  What I thought was remarkably odd was when Wifey and I walked outside at night to put something in our shed.  It was in the 80 degree zone so not too hot at all and we merely walked and did not exert ourselves - no work was done.  When we were walking back to the house I was dripping with sweat like I had just worked out for an hour and she wasn't sweating at all.  Here is where I finally took my temperature and saw it was about 101. OK, something is brewing here.  Maybe this is more than just heat exhaustion and dehydration...

When I woke up on Monday I couldn't even sit up.  I had nothing left in me.  Zero energy, zero breath, nothing.  Migraine stage headache, pains in my neck, shoulders and lower back, leg cramps, rocking a fever in the 102's, and a cough and burning lungs that would not quit.  At one point my ears even started ringing and I wondered if I was starting to lose my hearing.  I had no idea what was wrong with me.  I thought I'd let it ride for the rest of the day, my fever isn't THAT high and if it's still there in the morning I'd call the doctor.  I kept thinking, "OK, it's not the flu because I'd have a cold.  It's not appendicitis because I'd have abdominal pain.  I've had bronchitis & this is nothing like that.  Whatever this is will pass soon or get worse & I'll know what it is.  And if it's not gone by tomorrow I'll go to the Dr."  Of course nothing changes until about 9:00pm when I can't call a doctor and my only options are wait until morning or go to the ER.  I didn't think it was an emergency at first but when my fever reached 103.5 and kept rising after taking a fever reducer, I seriously considered the ER and regretted not calling my doctor earlier in the morning.  I decided that if it reached 105 we'd go.  We got close to 104 but it did start coming down.  I was vigilant about taking acetaminophen every 4 hours to keep it at bay but even with that it wouldn't stay lower than 101.

When I went to the doctor on Tuesday he surprised me with his possible diagnosis and with what he wanted me to do.  He thought it might be a form of meningitis and wanted me to go to the ER for a workup to rule it out. Figures.  I should have just gone the night before & avoided all of this nonsense!  Luckily after a ton of bloodwork and a chest X-Ray I was cleared of meningitis and diagnosed with pneumonia and a decent amount of dehydration.  Yay!  And the neck and back pain are probably just from the yardwork for the past week.  The nurse thought it was odd that I was happy to have pneumonia and I explained that I'd take pneumonia over meningitis any day!  Plus it meant that I got to avoid having a spinal tap.  I didn't really want to have a spinal tap.  The only Spinal Tap I like goes to eleven.  This one would want ten to be louder.

So now I'm probably taking more medication that I have collectively over the past 4 years (that's a whole other blog), and I still feel kinda crappy.  I have a follow up with the doctor tomorrow so hopefully he can shed some light on when I'll get some relief from this.  I hope it's sooner rather than later because right now I can't make it through much.  I had a 40 minute phone conversation with my sister and I had to hang up because I couldn't breathe anymore.  This is reminding me of my asthmatic youth where my lungs would hold me back from everything.  The rest of my body feels fine - I have energy back, I have pep, my headache is gone, the other aches aren't so bad either, but my lungs can't keep up.  It's just frustrating, especially with 2 young kids who want to run all over the place and I just can't right now.

You have probably guessed that I didn't run the Christmas In July Boardwalk 5K that was this past Sunday.  I can't imagine why?!  I have my first DNS :(  I guess we all incur them at some point.  But it will probably be a while before I am able to run again.  Hopefully I can still do the Color Run at the end of next month, and I'm actually happy that I haven't already registered for more races yet this season because I just don't know what to expect.

So keep your fingers crossed that this doesn't take long!  I'm really, psychotically looking forward to fall running & I can't do that if I can't train!  I'll keep you posted!

Maybe I'm a Winter Runner?

July is hot.  And humid.  And it sucks to run in.  There was a point today where I thought my face was literally going to catch fire and the purple didn't go away for about an hour.  I don't think I like running in the heat.

This is funny to me because I prefer the heat to the cold in just about every other scenario in life.  In fact, I usually feel like I can't function in cold at all!  But while hitting the pavement today I was longing for that frigid day in December where it was much easier to breathe, where I knew I wasn't going to overheat, where even though my fingers were frozen the rest of my body was still plenty warm.

It dawned on me today that while I started running last summer, I never really ran outside until September!  Sure, there were the 2 color runs but the weather was nowhere near as hot as it is now and definitely not as humid.  I spent all of my early training days on a treadmill in my air-conditioned basement, and now I think I'm paying for it!

Today's run was on a different-ish route around my house.  There really aren't too many roads so no matter what I'm going to end up doing what I've done before, but today I started in a different direction than I normally do and went out to one of the main roads - Lucky for me it had a sidewalk!  Less than a mile in I could already feel the heat in my face and was struggling to breathe. I wasn't sure how far I would make it and I really didn't have a route in mind so I figured I'd play it by ear.  I would have liked to have completed 3.1 miles because I have another race next weekend, but after I hit the 2 mile mark I knew I didn't have another mile in me and headed home.

The good news for today is that I did the 2.25 miles all running - I did not walk at all and so that's an improvement from last week's race!  I completed my first mile in 10:03 and my average pace was 10:21.  You can see all of the stats on MapMyRun.  Not my fastest by any means, but not my slowest either!  So I'm getting there.  I need some more work before I'm back at last year's pace but I'm not embarrassed by today's performance, lol. 

Also, I have a new appreciation for Gatorade.  With all of my past runs I have done strictly water and then I grab something light after the run, like a banana or a granola bar or something.  I've never really tried the whole sports drink thing before, never really needed to.  But for my past 2 runs, I was too overheated to even think about eating anything.  At the race last week they were handing out cups of Gatorade at the finish line and I was more than happy with that.  And again today when I got back home, I couldn't think about food but instead reached for the Gatorade.  So I'm a fan of it in this oppressive heat!  I never in a million years thought I'd be looking forward to a winter run, lol!!

Milltown Firecracker 5K Race Recap

This was a doozy!

I was running this with my friend Kristin.  Both of us were nervous because neither of us was in our top racing form.  She has always been much faster than me and is in better shape than me in general, so when she was nervous I became much more nervous!  She tried out the course a few days before the race and struggled with it which added to my apprehension but I said, let's see what happens!  I trained for a total of 2 days for this race, I was sore from the prep time (or lack thereof, however you want to look at it), there was going to be 92% humidity while we were running, and there were lots of hills which I have never run on.  Ever.  What could possibly go wrong?! *note the sarcasam*

The Night Before

Since this race was an hour away from my house Kristin picked up my registration packet (or "death bag" as she coined it) for me.  I spent the night at my mom's house and when I got my racing bib I was happy to see that my racing number was 308.  This was the number of the house I "grew up" in in Old Bridge.  I put grew up in in quotation marks because we didn't move into this house until I was 15 but it was the first house that our family bought after years of apartment living, it was the house where we had so much fun, it was the house that all of our friends hung out at.  Swinging door policy there - there was never a day or night when someone wasn't over and it was awesome. When I saw that number I breathed a slight sigh of relief, hoping it was a good omen for the next morning. 

Getting Started

Off to a bad start as usual - I snoozed through my alarm for about half an hour, leaving only half an hour to get ready.  Typical, but not the end of the world.  I didn't have a good night of sleep because my mother's upstairs neighbor was walking around late at night, sounds I am not used to anymore especially since we don't even have an upstairs level to our house.  On top of that, the neighbor has 2 small dogs, so in the middle of the night while they were prancing around, my half-asleep mind thought I was hearing my children coming into my bedroom so every time they walked, I woke up.

I have been using a Keurig for so long now that I think I have forgotten how to make coffee.  What I made in my mother's regular coffee pot was absolutely awful so I couldn't drink it.  My usual pre-race bagel for breakfast wasn't sitting too well with me either so I didn't eat all of it and instead for the first time I grabbed a Gatorade "Prime" sports fuel pack.  I had a Fruit Punch flavored one and that sat much better in my stomach than any food did though I was still hoping there would be time for a bathroom break before the race. 

I actually didn't do too bad for time but we were a little later than we had hoped.  We walked to the park where the race was starting from Kristin's house and as we got to the park entrance, we saw that there was already a large group of people lined up and an announ
cer was counting down the start!  Were we really that late?!  Were we actually going to miss the race?!  Like idiots we started running toward the crowd that was now running directly at us, only to realize...it was the fun run.  Yup.  We just tried to run to catch the start line of the fun run.  *smh*

There was still time for a bathroom break but they were the oh so lovely port-a-johns.  And they only had 2 unlocked.  And one of them had a seat covered with...well...poop.  I don't know how you even do that.  So one john for hundreds of racers.  We spent the rest of our time before the race on line for the bathroom.  We barely made it to the starting line but we did it.  This start was strange to me...maybe I just didn't hear it, but the announcer didn't count us down, he just said to get ready and a few minutes passed us by and he said nothing else.  Then seemigly out of the blue the gun went off and we got started!

Setting The Pace

Pace was difficult for me.  I mean, it usually is anyway btu this time it was different.  The start was hard because I felt like it took a long time for everyone to spread out and it was probably because the first thing you do is run up a hill, lol.  I stayed with Kristin for almost the first mile which I was happy with because I know she's a fast runner.  Checking my stats, my first mile was done in 9:39, which is average for where I was when I actually WAS running, haha.  And then when I did slow down, I was still able to see Kristin ahead of me.  I kept thinking that if I can see her, maybe I'll be able to dig deep and catch up with her again.  And then we hit a monstrous hill.  OK, so it wasn't monstrous.  And it wasn't even the biggest hill in the race.  We hit that probably about a mile or so in.  But somewhere around 2 miles is when I HAD to slow even more.  I am not proud, but I had to walk up the rest of the hills.  I tried as hard as I could to run them but it was just too much.  And in all honesty, at that point there probably wasn't much of a difference between my running and walking speed anyway.  So, adios Goal #1 - to finish without walking.

Relief Along The Way

Today was hot.  And the humidity was killer.  It was like trying to breathe with a hot, wet sponge over your face.  I am not used to that at all!  One of the things that I did like about this race is that the residents of Milltown really like to get involved with it.  Not only were there additional water stations courtesy of random people standing in front of their houses, but other stood outside with hoses or sprinklers for us to run through and for that I am very grateful.  I don't know how I would have done if I didn't get to run through a few hoses!  One person was handing out shots of vodka...no thank you.  Not only am I running, but it's 8:00 in the morning!  Fun that they would offer though!

There was one guy who was running completely barefoot.  I don't know why.  I get that some people have a theory about being natural and feeling the earth and the impact to your body and it protects something, blah, blah, blah, but even they wear a type of shoe for that. Before the 2 mile mark I passed no shoe guy because he was walking as well.  I don't know how he even did that because the soles of my feet were burning from the hot blacktop...and I was wearing socks & sneakers!  To each their own I guess, right?  I hope his feet are OK!

Finishing

This was a tough course for me for about a million reasons.  My MapMyRun time read 35:40 and the official time was 35:43.  Both are my worst time to date.  Including my first ever 5K while training last year.  So adios Goal #2 - to finish in under 35:00 (originally it was 32:00 but I changed it yesterday).

Bel = 0, The Race = 1.  We need to fix this!

While I am disappointed in both my time & my performance, I am still proud of myself.  I never stopped even though there were PLENTY of times I wanted to.  I could hear my body screaming at me and my mind screaming at me, "Just sit down for a minute!" and I never did.  Yes I walked but I didn't stop moving.  I was afraid of this run and totally unprepared but I did it anyway and I survived.  So there's the silver lining :)

Oh, I also forgot to mention that this was my first race with one of those chips attached to the bib, so yay for that!  I like it when the MMR time is that close to the actual time :)

One Year Running Anniversary & Last Run Until Race Day!!!

My little man wasn't feeling so hot this morning and he took a nap pretty early so I decided to take advantage of it and went for a run in the basement.

My goal today was to hit 3 (or 3.1) miles.  I did not accomplish that, but I was a bit faster than yesterday.  I made it 2.25 miles in 21:42.  That's not great, but I feel better about those numbers.  I am still very worried about how I will do on Thursday and am afraid I won't finish without walking.  But I've prepped as much as one can in 3 days & what will be will be! 

I am definitely taking tomorrow off from working out completely.  After 2 days of running, I'm starting to feel it in my hip flexors again - apparently this is just my running sore spot.  Some people have bad knees, some people get tight hamstrings, apparently I do something to my flexors.  I felt none of this with the Insanity workouts but woke up this morning with some soreness in my hips.  So I grabbed the foam roller immediately after my run and then stretched, stretched, stretched.  I will probably stretch & roll tomorrow just to keep everything loose, but that's it.

Funny - Insanity takes more out of me and I hurt over more of my body but I was able to do that 4 days in a row without a break.  Running is "easier", I feel it less all over, but when I do hurt it is a bigger pain and I can't do it as many consecutive days in a row.  Interesting.

I have no idea what to expect for Thursday but it does feel great to be back in the game again, even if I'm not 100% ready.  One year of this has taught me not to stress too much and just go for it so I'm hoping that will hold true for me this time too.  Can you believe that?!  June 20th marked one full year since I first stepped foot on the treadmill & began this crazy journey!!  I actually didn't even realize it until I checked the date while writing this blog entry.  Amazing.  I feel like I made more progress in those first few months than I have in the last 9!  I am still amazed that I am able to run at all but hopefully I'll make more progress this year.  Here's to many more years of running in my future!

Pure Cardio Hell & 5K Prep

OK, so this Insanity Workout is just that...INSANE!  You are supposed to do one of their workouts every day of the week except for one.  One day off, that's all you get.  There is an "easy" day - easy on the cardio, but you're still working your muscles with yoga poses and stretches.  After 4 straight days of this my muscles were still aching and my body was screaming for a break.  So I took a day off yesterday to let my poor quads recover and it was just what I needed.

I woke up still a little sore this morning but feeling much better so I went right back into the workout schedule.  Today's workout was called "Pure Cardio" and it was pure hell.  I needed to take a break during the warm-up session, and about halfway through the actual workout I threw-up.  So I am happy I decided not to eat until AFTER the workout, lol.  But in all seriousness, I knew this was going to be hard, I just didn't expect it to be like this.  It does make me feel a little better to see that the people in the video have to take breaks too...and they seem to be in pretty good shape so it helps that I don't feel so ridiculous.

Map of the Milltown Firecracker 5K.  *Note the hills*

Today I also officially registered for a 5K on the 4th of July.  Which is 3 days away.  And I haven't run since April.  I am hoping to get a run in tonight, just to see where I am at & how far I can go.  And if I am not happy with it I will run again tomorrow.  No matter what though, Wednesday I am taking off - from everything - because I want my body to rest before the race.

I don't expect much as far as time goes for this race, and there are a few hills which I am not used to at all.  Honestly, I'll be happy to finish all 3.1 miles running.  Secondary goal is to keep it under 32 minutes, which is long for me for a 5K but all things considered, I don't want to set myself up for disappointment.  Seriously, I'll settle for simply finishing without walking, regardless of time.  Hopefully I'll be better prepared for the next race & then I can continue to knock out some of my other running goals for the year.  Speaking of which, one of those goals was to run with Kristin and now I will accomplish that on Thursday.  Yay!!  It's only taking me 7 months to accomplish ONE thing on my goal list, but hey - it's progress, right??!!