LOOK ON THE POSITIVE SIDE

For the last 4 days I have been in bed with the flu, this was no ordinary flu, this was man flu!

I read about an American runner called Le May - when he was at the peak of his training he would avoid taking public transport and sometimes even his family. Is this extreme? If you are not into running you might think so but after spending 4 days in bed feeling like death I am coming around to his way of thinking.

Due to the recent change in weather in the UK everyone gets ill; it’s only a matter of time before it hits you. After a particularly gruelling track session on Tuesday evening I went around to visit my girlfriend who had not been feeling too well, instead of me looking after her she had to look after me. I was totally exhausted and that night my immune system must have been hugely weakened as I woke feeling awful.

Waking in the middle of the night to find your sheets drenched in sweat that smells like TCP due to all the medication you have been taking is particularly unpleasant, coughing until your lungs are red raw is excruciatingly painful especially as due to my asthma they are highly sensitive. I remember going into a pub once before the ban and coming out feeling like I had smoked a packet. The only thing that you can do is take you medicine, rest and wait.

It has put my training back a bit but I have decided to look at this minor setback as a positive thing. I am prone to training too hard at times and maybe jumped back into hard training too soon after the Amsterdam half marathon while my calf muscles were still very sore. The way I am viewing it is that if I had not picked up the flu I would have probably picked up another injury, so the forced break although frustrating is not the end of the world. To look at it another way my legs are feeling amazingly pain free this evening.