September 27, 2013: TGIF

Two weeks 'til the Windy City Marathon. 16 days. It's getting so close I can almost smell the morning dew on the grass of the Chicago Grant Park.

No ladybugs were harmed in the making of this picture.

Who am I kidding? I've never been to this Grant Park. But I hope the grass - if any - is shorter than in the picture.

Alright, enough B.S., let's go back to me and my training. I ran an easy 3 miles on Monday, an easy 6 miles on Tuesday and I crossed-trained on Wednesday by spinning 60 minutes on a stationary bike. Doing so, I tried the energy gels my triathlete of a coworker suggested. It's called Hammer Gel, it has 19g of complex carbs, sodium, and some amino acids. And it tastes like shit.

Puke or diarrhea? Lemme know what it does for you. 

Coincidence factors to-be-determined, I took this gel at 8am on the bike and by 3pm I was so sick I had to leave work and go home. I had random pain in all my muscles so there was definitely an immune reaction to something. But surprisingly no sore throat, no cough, and no fever. I just stayed in bed until 10am the following day. And it was mostly gone, although I was still tired. Since I would have been an M.D. in another life, here are my two hypotheses:

1 - My immune system is awful and I had an intense reaction to something that wouldn't have an effect on normal people.
2 - My immune system is amazing and my body nailed a severe cold in about 24 hours.

I vote for 2. In actuality, I have noticed the frequency and the duration of my colds have significantly decreased since I started running about 2 years ago. My colds used to last solid 2 weeks and my sore throats sometimes 4 or more weeks. Now, nothing lasts longer than a week. At least I'm not a marathon runner for nothing.

I dare you to invade my marathon runner body, dumb asses.

This morning, I went back to the gym and ran an easy 4 miles. Heart rate was higher than usually, about 165bpm for a speed of 5.8mph and an incline of 1%, but I suspect it's because my body is still recovering from the 5 billion bacteria that invaded my body Wednesday afternoon.

Thus far, I've ran only 13 mi this week so I'm gonna try to do 8 mi on Saturday and maybe 10 on Sunday. And I think I'll be fine, it's the tapering period after all. And anyways, it's still better than Pamela Anderson's training plan (see this website).

I'll post again on Sunday or Monday. I hope you have a great weekend, watching Breaking Bad and commenting on my posts.