Friday night my throat was scratchy, swollen and sore, my cold had moved down into my chest and I was coughing and sniffling and wishing that my body would stop aching so I could get some rest. I found myself googling “running 20 miles while sick” to see just how bad of an idea my Saturday morning plans were. The consensus was that if your symptoms are above your neck then you are good to go, if they are below then you’d better stay home. Well, my symptoms were all over and I knew that my stubborn, I can do anything if I put my mind to it, attitude would take over anyway so I went to bed early and hoped for the best when the alarm went off.

Thankfully, I felt pretty good in the morning. My chest was definitely feeling the weight of sickness, but it was much better than the day before, and I was coughing substantailly less. My sugar was pretty high, 176. I ate some peanut-butter filled pretzels (these are my guilty pleasure as of late), took half my normal bolus of insulin, and turned my basal down to 50%. I was on the road by 6. My plan was to run out to North Chagrin Reservation, which is about 8 miles from my house, do 4 miles in the park, then head home. I’m not a good loop runner. I’d much rather do an out and back course because then I know that I have to run the miles to make it home. I have to admit, though, that I was a little nervous running that far from home while I was still sick. I also knew that if I had stayed close to home it would have been too easy to just give up and call Kyle for a ride home, so I stuck with the original plan.

I actually felt good when I started running. I didn’t cough, my lungs were clear, and my energy-level was higher than it had been all week. My sugar decided to creep up to the 250 range, but it dropped to 200 around mile 6 and stayed there throughout the entire 20 miles. Once again, I didn’t eat any carbohydrates during the run, but because I ate beforehand, I felt confident that I would be okay. I got a boost at mile 8 when I ran into a friend and her running group in the metropark. We ran together until mile 11, when I broke off and headed toward home. At this point, my legs started to fatigue, but I did some self-talk, “if you can do this, you can do anything” kind of crap (you know…the typical cheesy, generic, you can do it, positive attitude stuff that makes motivational speakers a shitload of money). Surprisingly, it actually worked (with the help of some well-timed tunes on my ipod). At mile 16 I was feeling good, amazed that I only had 4 miles to go. I hit the center button on my nano and heard the anonymous, female voice tell me that my pace was 8:37 and I almost shat myself right there. I could not believe that I was moving that quickly. I felt good, but I certainly didn’t feel like I was running at that pace. I checked my sensor graph…200, clenched my teeth, and dug deep to finish the last 4 miles. I had a 20 mile personal best in 3:00:30. I was very happy to stop running, but I know that I could have kicked the hell out of another 6.2 miles. Chicago is looming in my horizon and I am more than ready to meet the challenge of a sub 4:00 marathon.

Not only did I PR a 20 mile run, but I sat in a car for 1.5 hours while my ass screamed in pain, walked around Cedar Point for 6.5 hours, and carried my two-year-old daughter on my shoulders while we rocked out with monsters…

I’m not going to know what to do with myself when I finish my marathon and don’t have to take care of two children, plan a birthday party, or spend a day at an amusement park afterwards. Maybe I should tell my sister to plan a walking tour of the city after the race, since avoiding rest has resulted in easy recovery and escape from injury. Something tells me that a massage would be much more enjoyable though…

** This is a call to any diabetic athletes who read this blog. Can anyone please explain why your sugar skyrockets (even with a bolus) directly following a run, is beyond difficult to get back down, and then, once you get it in control, it plummets and is nearly impossible to keep up for the rest of the day…this pattern is making me slightly crazy.**