A Bad Week

The week started off pretty good with Sunday's race, but the rest of the week went downhill fast.

I knew I'd be sore on Monday; that didn't really bother me. I had to do a kind of penguin waddle to get down stairs, but part of me really likes that soreness. It let's me know I worked out hard, really hard.

But then Monday I was in the dentist's chair getting two cavities filled. I haven't had a cavity in a decade - what gives? My dentist is a warm fun guy, but he is full of cheesy analogies. For my check-up, he kept comparing my teeth and his tests to pathology terms for me. And after telling him about my race, he let me know that one of my cavities was a lot bigger than he had originally thought. "If I were to compare your cavities to running," he started while I regretted telling him about the previous day's race,"the one on your right side would be just like a 5k race, but the one on the left, that one was more like a marathon!" Fabulous. Fortunately, he was able to fill them both in just over an hour. Too bad it wasn't a marathon, because that's be a crazy fast world record!

Thursday, I went home from work sick and got home to find Liam suffering from a similar fate. By 3 am Saturday morning, the bug had made its way to Megan. She made her illness known by vomiting all over me and her bed, requiring a middle of the night linen change. Liam greeted Mac in similar fashion at 5:50 in our bedroom, adding to the rapidly growing laundry pile. By Saturday night my hubris over not needing other doctors came back to bite me when I realized I had strep throat! I managed to avoid this malady in my adolescence, so I wasn't too worried when Megan's preschool reported a couple of cases at school. But somehow the bug got passed to me and I assure you I was NOT making out with the three year olds! Fortunately, a doc friend was able to hook me up with meds so I didn't have to go back on my word about not going to see a physician anytime soon! I'm not being so cavalier with the kids - they are going to the pediatrician's tomorrow.

Because of illness, I ran a lousy three miles this week (not counting the race). Today I was planning to go for a long run, but just couldn't deal with the "graupel" that was coming down (We learned this vocab word from the Salem paper this week. Who knew it could be so educational?!?). Mac and I went to the gym instead, where I decided to run a "pace" workout on the treadmill. I was hoping to do an hour at 8.0 mph, but I didn't make it past six miles. This afternoon, my legs were mildly sore again. This is the soreness I don't like, the soreness that says "you're a big wimp." Yeah, I was tired and sick this week, but I was still disappointed.

I am hoping that vacation (two weeks off starting Monday) and a bottle of antibiotics bring better things in the weeks to come.