As I sit here typing, I have 4 medications or supplements circulating in my body:
1. Zicam
2. Zinc
3. Claritin
4. Flovent (a corticosteroid inhaler)
Five, if you count the glass of red wine I allowed myself to take the edge off my freak-out. I’m running the Sacramento Marathon in a week, I’ve trained really hard for a PR, and I caught a #$@%&! cold two days ago.
The pre-marathon cold. It’s what every marathoner dreads.
You spend four months training rigorously, rising at ungodly hours to nudge your body towards capacity. You guzzle revolting concentrations of Cytomax or Endurox after hard runs. You explain to your spouse for the 90th time that “yes, you married an obsessive fiend” who must leave on weekend mornings, trading cozy comfort for punishing parameters out on the road. Your interval workouts, tempo runs, marathon pace runs and easy recovery runs leave you either exuberant and exhilarated, downcast and disappointed, or somewhere in between, depending on the day. You eat ridiculous quantities of food, scaring co-workers and casual acquaintances. If you’re lucky, you nap. Secretly, you love it all.
For me, it’s fun to have an aggressive goal, entertaining to metaphysically chuckle at my braggadocio, satisfying to watch my body adapt to increasingly rigorous demands. It makes me feel alive and connected.
But marathon training depends on a delicate balance: you push your body to extremes while trying to sustain a healthy immune system. Not surprisingly, sometimes the scales tip over, usually during the taper, when the body senses it is no longer in frantic defense mode. Scientific and medical evidence supports the theory behind the syndrome; it’s the same physiological mechanism that perversely strikes down teachers when they go on vacation: you let up, you’re screwed.
I knew something was wrong during the Thanksgiving 4-miler. My body said I was running a 6:50 pace, but the clock said 7:00’s. I’d set out, not unreasonably based on my recent training, to run a 27 minute race, but the last half mile, found myself clawing and grasping towards 28. I finished in 28:04, a heaving mess. I had felt so good in the week leading up to the race. What happened?
I cursed the answer, which became increasingly clear as Friday wore on with classic cold symptoms: scratchy throat, runny nose, congestion, mild fatigue. Yikes! I knew if it took hold, I’d be out of competition. I ran for my usual measures of defense: Zicam (a zinc nasal gel; I swear by it) and zinc lozenges (one of the only cold remedies clinically shown to reduce the duration and severity of a cold). The inhaler and Claritin were bigger guns, prescribed previously during a particularly nasty cold earlier in the season. I didn’t hesitate to reach for them.
Though I typically scorn what I consider excessive reliance on medications, I’ve been religiously using these four “interventions” for the last three days, and I must admit, they seem to be working. I ran my “depletion run” today, a 12-miler at 8 minute pace (I’ll describe the carb depletion/load regimen in tomorrow’s post), and actually felt energized after the run. Aside from a few sniffles, I’ve been practically symptom-free all day.
It feels like I’ll be home free in a few days. I’m hopeful I’ll be recovered enough to reach my goal of a sub-3:15 marathon in seven days.
And if it all goes south next weekend, well, I can go South with a backup marathon…the Mardi-Gras Marathon takes place in my former temporary hometown of New Orleans, on February 1st.
But first things first.
Well said Maggie and so true… I’m crossing my fingers for you. You are going to have a great race!