hacking my way through Sunday

Words 402; 1 picture

            The timing of this cough could not be worse.  I didn’t run on Thur, Fri, or Saturday.  The first time is have NOT run for three days in a row for several years.  I ran from my new room to BDNX, the All-Russia Exhibition Center.  It’s a holdover from the Soviet Union that has taken a capitalistic dose of commercialism—the grounds are beautiful, though. 
The 2-mile route to get there was among belching, stinking cars, but when I got into the park, it was lovely.  It was ‘Moscow Day’ but the overcast skies kept the crowds down and it was perfect—just enough people to make it interesting, but not so many that they were clogging the arteries.   

            A couple times during the run, I did some intense coughing—even came up with a bit of nasty.  In general though, I have an ‘unproductive’ cough.  Coughing for no reason—dry hacking.  It sucks.  Last night, while wasn’t sleeping, I looked on the web and found that my symptoms closely match something called, GERD—it’s a fancy name for heartburn, and involves food coming back up the esophagus from the stomach.  I am doubtful of this explanation because I don’t feel heartburn, it’s just an annoying tickle in the bottom on my throat.  One way to fight GERD, though, it to sleep with the torso elevated, and that does help me.  I drink a lot of tea with lemon and something called Terraflu— stuff added to hot water that is supposed to alleviate flu-like symptoms.

            My running  program has me doing 6 1-minute runs tomorrow with 2 minutes in between, then 40 minutes on Thursday and 20 minutes on Saturday before the race on Sunday.  That means I will have missed an 18-mile jog and a 10-mile ‘hard’ run in preparation.  I guess it will have to do.

            The keen observer of this blog will notice that I ran quite a bit slower yesterday.  I am satisfied that the later miles were quicker than the earlier miles.  All throughout the run, I was looking up, thinking about things and greeting other runners.  So, my mental state was good. I think my goal for the whole marathon will be an average of 8:30 per mile. This will give me a finish time of 3 hours and 42 minutes.  A bit slower than last time, but this damn cold/flu/cough is kicking my butt.

08-Sep
1	08:13
2	08:34
3	08:27
4	08:26
5	08:45
6	08:27
7	08:41
8	08:23
9	08:20
10	08:17
11	08:20
12	08:09
13	08:14
	08:24

Here are three Ethiopians running the Marathon for the Championships this August.  I think we are going to run the same route.