Last note: Chicago Marathon is Sunday

It's Friday morning, my is bag (pretty much) packed, I've got my confirmation ticket that guarantees me a bib, and my zenned out "whatever happens is fine" state of mind is holding up quite well.

My bib # is 16766

If you think you'd like to have many hours of your Sunday punctuated with reminders of my agony, you can follow my progress through a runner tracking system with online updates or text messages, your choice. Click here to sign up for that (I'm registered as Patricia Daniels.)

I'm going to Chicago with 4 other women, among them some phenomenally fast and dedicated runners. I'm taking the approach pointed out by Ally Gould: you paid for this weekend, you want to stay out there as long as possible to get your money's worth.

A few details:

• The marathon begins around 8 a.m. on Sunday
• I have calculated that if I walk all 26.2 miles at a 15-minute pace then I will finish in 6 1/2 hours, which is when they officially close the race course.
  
• If I run 13 miles at a 12-minute pace and walk the other half at 15-minute pace I'll finish in about 6 hours.
• If at any point my lungs revolt and decide they are not, NOT putting up with this any more, then I'm willing to drop out. But I'd really rather not and I think I can avoid that.

A few more facts:

The shoes I'm racing in have logged less than 10 miles. This is unorthodox, but my only other option is the shoes that have logged too many miles and feel dead. Had I done any running in the last three weeks, these shoes would have been perfectly broken in. However if you read my earlier post about Saucony, you'll agree that I have no reason to worry.

I've decided to pack only a carry-on for the plane. The choice was to check a bag and carry-on everything I need for race day (so as not to lose said shoes and everything else), or just just to carry-on everything. When I realized that in fact I can stuff all my Gu, Himaya sunscreen, toothpaste, etc into a one-quart bag, and that all these items are in packages under 3 ounces, I decided not to flirt with the risk of O'Hare baggage handlers keeping straight the luggage of 40,000 arriving runners.

Yes, 40,000 runners are in the Chicago Marathan. For comparison's sake, this is the population of the entire City of Burlington, Vt. This is 20 times the population of the town of Grand Isle, Vt. And as of 9 a.m. on Friday, this is more than four times the value of the Dow. (Give it a 1/2 hour, I think it might be five times the value of the Dow.)

Thanks for the good wishes. Talk to you next week!

www.ChicagoMarathan.com

When lungs attack

When I last wrote, I cheerfully detailed the disgusting phlegm issue that took up residence in my respiratory tract, along with a deep cough, endless floes of snot and an occasional low-grade fever (did I mention the fever?) I had run 13 miserable miles and I muddled through the next week, not running on the weekdays and imagining that this was a way of saving up my energy to attempt a quality long run.

That strategy actually worked quite well. On Sunday September 20 I got up before dawn and drove to Richmond to run 20 miles. The plan was to start earlier than Heidi and Beth and finish at the same time to gorge ourselves on baked goods. I didn't know what to expect for this run and I was exceedingly pleased at how well it went. I walked a little, kept a reasonable pace, saw a beaver swimming in the Winooski River, listened to some great podcasts (including one that confirmed for me that the kicker for the San Diego Chargers is a huge public radio fan), and finished in a time that was as good as I could expect, regardless of whether I've sick an undertrained. Though I was exhausted in the last 3 miles.

After that Sunday 20 miler, I was slammed at work for a few days and woke up Wednesday with a resurgent sore throat, cough, stuffy nose, headache. I made it through that day on will power alone, and then spent the next several days in bed feeling sorry myself. I subsisted on popsicles and Robitussin for several days, and finally went to the doctor. He told me that three weeks of coughing is a danger zone but that, I quote, "it's not walking pneumonia yet." Yet! Excellent! I took my three prescriptions to the pharmacy, where I also bought still more popsicles and Kleenex with lotion. I love Kleenex with lotion.

When I attempted going back to work my coworkers gasped and ran for cover at the disgusting sounds of my mucusy cough, prompting them to send me home. The cough stuck around, the stuffy nose continued to be full of yellow muck, I carried on feeling sorry for myself and finally went back to the doctor. He sent me to the hospital for a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia, but didn't have much to offer for a virus that won't let go.

At this point I was on Week 2 of having not run at all, and Week 4 of having run very little and race day was approaching. One might argue that "rest" before a race is good thing, but not the kind of rest brought on by chronic wasting disease.

And now three weeks have passed, and the race is a few days away. I did run on Monday this week, a nice and easy 5 miles that felt pretty good. A little coughing, more than a little snot (that's what sleeves are for) but the new shoes felt great and I was able to change pace pretty easily throughout the run.

So to recap: my training has stunk, from beginning to end. Some of it was lack of effort, some of it was injury, some of it was an overextended schedule, and in the end I got slammed by sickness. The afternoon that I went to get a chest x-ray was the first time I really questioned whether I would try to run the race. But with a negative x-ray on my side, and the memory of that pretty successful 20 mile run, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic.

Why, why do I do this?

So yes, it's Saturday night and I'm sitting home updating my blog. That is pretty sorry situation, but not as sorry as my run this afternoon: 13 miles, half of it walked, copious amounts of phlegm and snot left along the way.

Ten days ago I had a vicious sore throat that I was determined to beat back with Ricola cough drops, Emergen-C fizzy drink stuff, gallons of water and popsicles. (I like popsicles when I'm sick.) That was a week and two boxes of Puffs Plus ago, not to mention hours upon hours of sick time spent on my couch.

Two days into it, I did a long run - 17 miles - despite the runny nose and sore throat. I was waaaay fatigued and walked more than is respectable but I got the miles in that's what counted. The days that followed left me questioning whether that was such a good idea: waking with endless volumes of snot blowing from my nose, headaches, sore throat, raspy voice. It was enough to make me wonder: with so few weekends left for quality long runs before the the taper, would I have been better off resting through the beginning of a cold and potentially not making it worse; or doing the long run because there are no spare weekends to put if off?

And let the bronchitis-emphyzema-hacking cough that has taken up residence in my lungs be the proof: perhaps I shouldn't have run last weekend. It's the kind of cough that employs a demented ability to surprise: sometimes it's dry and chaffs my throat, sometimes it leaves me choking on sloppy chunks of phelgm; sometimes it disappears for hours, then it rears back with such viciousness that my abs are as sore as my bronchial tubes.

At 8:30 this morning I called Nadine (who helpfully reported, "Ew. You don't sound good") to say that I did want to try running, and I was hopeful in guessing that the afternoon might be the optimal time for my lung capacity. We slogged through 13 miles on the bike path in Burlington, with generous walk breaks whilst I tried to get all the coughing out in one long spell, having saved it up for however long we'd just run. Along the way we cataloged our health complaints: in addition to the vile infection that's taken over over my respiratory tract, I've got a spot of tendonitis in my right knee, off and on low back pain, bursitis in my right hip and apparently a bad kidney (as I determined around 3:30 this morning when I woke up with a mysterious localized pain in my back) . Excellent! I think I need serious rest, a massive infusion of nutrition and some good luck too. ("Luck is for the ill-prepared" - yep, that sound about right....)

Chicago marathon is one month away. Next weekend I'm going to run 20 quality miles and hope that it goes well enough to give me momentum to get to the start line and the finish line.