#resident problems

I missed my easy runs this past weekend after being called in unexpectedly to help in the ICUs as one of our resident physicians came down with a nasty case of H1N1 and was required to stay home. Frustrating training wise as it’s nearly impossible to run while in the ICU and I already missed a good chunk of my January runs for that very reason. 

I’ve been feeling similarly bad the past few days, starting Monday. Not H1N1 bad, just “under the weather” & “raspy voice” bad. I was just hoping to maintain my voice for a talk I gave on Tuesday but other than that didn’t think it would affect my running. 

A failed 5x1000m interval session on Lake Michigan last night (interrupted by dry heaving during the fourth interval) turned into a semi-interval session/easy run to get my mileage up. So I guess I may have been a little more under the weather than I expected (although, surprisingly, I hit my pace goals).

Today was a scheduled rest day, but I wanted to see if I could get in a few easy miles to run down my pace bunny for the 2014 miles in 2014 goal I have - working in the ICU during January and our Chiberia of a winter thus far did a lot to get me off to a poor start on that front. Had to throw in the towel after 2 slow miles secondary to cramping the type of which I haven’t had since high school. Bleh. Viruses. 

Tomorrow’s a new day, though, and there’s a 5 mile tempo run on tap. In the meantime I’m home sick(ish) doing some errands-type of work for work, sipping coffee, and rocking out to Acoustic at the Ryman by Band of Horses. Great album. 

This is the last week of my time in the medical ICU  this year and things have been really busy at work - which means, unfortunately, running had to take a back seat this week. 

This worked out well given the crazy low temperatures Chicago - and the rest of the nation for that matter - saw this past week. 

I got out there again tonight for 6 easy miles - was a little worried at the beginning as I felt like I was really working harder than normal to maintain an easy pace. Turns out I was just fatigued from my 26 hour call shift in the MICU last night and I was able to kick it up during the last 2/3 of the run with no problems.

I didn't have a specific mileage goal at the beginning of last year, just the plan to run more miles and maybe do some long runs with Meg if she ended up doing the Chicago Marathon again in the fall of 2013. Of course, that plan ended up changing a bit when I decided to join her and actually run 26.2 miles [which ended up being 26.5 miles since I can't run tangents, apparently] of my own at Chicago this year. 

It's laughable how much my mileage increased from 2012 to 2013, what with the end of medical school and the beginning of intern year and marathon training via the Hansons. 

The Hansons Brothers plans for 5Ks, 10Ks, halves, marathons, etc. don't vary a whole lot in terms of mileage, which means I'm running more consistent distances year round, although the miles do tend to decrease when I'm on tougher rotations in the hospital. But the beautiful thing about last year was that I was able to increase my mileage - dramatically - without a hiccough in terms of injuries. I started running in 2002 - for high school cross country - and in my eleven years of running have only had one true injury, a groin strain in 2003 that forced me to take the second half of my track season off and that left me with a permanent hitch in my stride. 

So now that the mileage is up, smoothly, I think I'll be able to hit 2014 miles in the year 2014. That's 38.7 miles a week, which is well within what I'm supposed to be running, anyways, based on my race training. So my real goal, running wise, for this year is to train appropriately for my races, year-round, and the mileage will naturally follow. I'm looking forward to posting the newest version of the graph below in 365 days. 

And I didn't run for 5 days. Felt fine when I got out there on the path tonight but damn.