finally friday
February 22, 2008
(heads up: this post gets kind of graphic near the end. consider yourself warned)
For whatever reason, this has been a particularly exhausting week. I can’t think of any one thing (or things) that made it especially tiring, but I’ve been beat all week. I’ve been feeling a little sick over the last couple of days (congestion, cough, etc), so maybe that’s the explanation. Regardless, my running has been going pretty well in spite of the illness.
Yesterday I had a particularly…. interesting…. run. As I mentioned, I have been pretty congested. This also means that my throat/nose/general lower head & upper chest area have been particularly phlegmy. Anyone who’s tried to run while dealing with this situation knows that it’s pretty awkward and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I just found myself spitting and coughing a little more along the way.
About 10 minutes into my six-miler, my nose started getting extra runny. Now that I’m a proficient snot-rocketeer, I loaded my guns and prepared to fire (i.e. plugged one nostril and aimed to ensure bodily clearance). “FIRE IN THE HOLE,” I said to myself as I let loose. (yeah, i’m that cool… don’t worry about it) A quick inspection of the clean-up part of my gloves (these are almost exactly the ones I wear), revealed a surprising quantity of blood!
What?!
I looked down and my shirt was speckled with red dots, too!
So, that was pretty unexpected! Since the idea of forcibly removing blood from my body like that was a little intense, I tried to avoid “launching any more rockets” for a while. Instead, I was forced to wait until it ran down my sinuses and spit it out with each new batch of phlegm. I kept thinking it would make a good episode of C.S.I. if they were following litte DNA deposits along the road to track down a serial killer.
Thankfully the bleeding stopped after ten minutes or so, and the rest of the run was full of normal-colored phlegm.
On a positive note, though, the run was quite a bit faster than it felt! The pace was just a hair under 7 min/mi. Good stuff. Hopefully this congestion will clear soon, and I can run normally again. (Also, I didn’t go this morning because I had to attend a meeting at 8:30. There was no way I was getting up at 5:00 to go running, so I’m going to go this afternoon between my classes.)
