Run sick?

The classic runner conundrum

The throat tightness started in the middle of the night. 
“Was that a body ache?” I wonder sleepily.

One minute so roasting I toss the covers off.
The next so frigid that I pull them back on tight.

As my head begins to ache it’s clear something is up, but I’m not yet clear exactly what. So as the sun rises on a sick day the question that beckons is: should I run?

“That’s absurd.” Normal people would state about running while sick. But they don’t run all the time. It’s not that I don’t take days off. I do. But those are hard-earned, strategically placed, recovery intervals amid cycles of intense effort. 

Which makes time off for illness so…annoying. 

The best sickness I ever experienced was a grotesque stomach bug caught the day of a 23-mile marathon workout. I’d overdone it on the roads one morning, so, as I puked my head off the following afternoon it occurred to me between upheaves that, “at least my legs can use this break!”

Sadly most sicknesses aren’t as timely.

Most illnesses are ambiguous and inconvenient, which forces my mind to cycle between two interconnected questions, “How bad is this?” and “How must my training adapt?”

As a kid, I read about champions who never took days off, those who pushed their bodies toward fitness through fever and phlegm. And I foolishly attempted to emulate their antics, which mostly resulted in shivering under heavy covers having made myself worse. 

And so I learned…slowly.

Over time spent slogging through counterproductive miles I came to respect that the task for each day isn’t just to run more, but rather to make the most of what my body is capable of each day. The vexing dilemma is always: will mileage help or hurt?

Cause I’ve run through sickness that resulted in strength. I’ve snotrocketted my way to easier breathing and sweated out physical stagnation on runs that shook me back to life. So easy miles can help. And thus the sick runner conundrum is: run through it today or wait till full strength?

Since the pursuit of fitness feels binary, each day trends either upward or down. And while a few days off likely doesn’t plummet my breathing ability, even 36-48 hours away leave my muscle tension feeling out of tune. So even a small sickness demands some adjustment, but how much?

Running while sick would seem absurd if so much of training didn’t already exist on a spectrum of imperfection. Cause if I only ran while feeling perfect runs would happen few and far between. As committed runners, we’re accustomed to discomfort. Any number of my monthly miles occur through soreness, fatigue, glycogen depletion, and or sleepiness. In fact, effortless runs are appreciated for what they are, outliers.

And so, as I recover from this recent mysterious multi-day illness, I aim to channel all of my hard-earned self-awareness.

But doing so demands embracing patience while admitting frustration. 
Requires making a plan while holding it loosely.  

And necessitates looking slightly more long-term than I might have preferred, yet with a renewed appreciation of my long-term strength.