In sickness...

I fell ill on Wednesday and was off work on Thursday and barely well enough to go in on Friday morning. With the marathon only six weeks away, I really didn't want to miss out on more running than necessary, so although I was still recovering I decided to head out on a Saturday Oakwood run.

I felt pretty good actually, so I headed out quite hard. Hit the roundabout at 5m40s - a good twenty seconds faster than I'd expect to go on a fast run. It turns out that my anaerobic energy isn't dented much by illness, but my aerobic fitness is wiped out. The anaerobic reserves took me up the first hill, and then there was the long downhill to recover on, followed by a short uphill to the roundabout. In essence my illness didn't really affect the time at all except for the fact that I pushed harder because I was conscious that I was a little wheezy from the illness so would expect to be puffing a bit more than usual...

And then it hit me - almost as soon as I passed the roundabout I was in trouble, starting to feel stitches coming on and really struggling to keep the pace up. Tried to overcome it on the uphill, but didn't really succeed. By the time I turned at Oakwood I was still well under 14 minutes but the pain was quite bad.

Contrary to what you might expect, running downhill isn't a good way to recover - the constant jarring just makes it difficult to get your breath running properly, and it's hard to convince myself to slow down. Eventually I did, and slowly started to recover.

I paid the price though, and couldn't run quickly for the rest of the route - eventually coming home in just over 28 minutes. That's my 31st fastest time :( - My last 11 outings had all been top 30s, and I'd been hoping to continue that record. A couple of seconds quicker (not having to stop for a car to turn...) would have made all the difference.

Still, considering I was ill, you can't really complain at a run that would have been my fastest Oakwood run ever if I'd done it a month and a bit ago.