My fever broke on Tuesday night\/Wednesday morning.\u00a0 Whether it was the four days of 2:30 AM wake-ups, the Petri dish that is a race start line featuring germs and ailments from all corners of the world, or just an inscrutable twist of fate, I came down with a flu-like illness either during the Walt Disney World Marathon or just after it.\u00a0 I had to fly to Los Angeles on Tuesday morning for a few things and as I sat shivering on the plane, I realized I should\u2019ve cancelled everything and just stayed in bed.\u00a0 Armed with a Z-pack from my GP, I essentially am doing just that, only instead of being on a couch in Florida, I\u2019m on a couch in California.<\/p>\n
As part of this trip, I had long ago registered for the Carlsbad Marathon.\u00a0 I even had paid the $20 surcharge for day-of packet pickup.\u00a0 I\u2019d rented a car instead of Ubering\/Lyfting wherever I needed to go.\u00a0 In scheduling facetime (actual facetime, not virtual Apple app FaceTime), I told friends I needed an early night on Saturday to drive down at 3 AM for the race on Sunday.<\/p>\n
But the future is in doubt.\u00a0 Whilst sweating out germs and agony in a restless fever dream earlier this week, I had decided not to go.\u00a0 But then the fever broke and, well, I began to hear the call of the road.\u00a0 Maybe I could rally?\u00a0 Besides, I\u2019m feeling lousy emotionally and mentally by not running; minor losses in weight (gains then in the fight of the waistline) have been given up in slothful lethargy and confusion over what to do with a cold\/flu (you feed it, right?\u00a0 I wish I had tried starving it).<\/p>\n
And so today I tried a short run to see how things might go.\u00a0 A canary in the mineshaft.\u00a0 A metal helmet balanced on my bayonet and raised above the trench line.\u00a0 And it turns out\u2026 I continue to cough like an 80-year-old five-packs-a-day smoker.\u00a0 It\u2019s a hacking, scratchy, thunderous cough, a wheezy take on a $25,000 Pyramid clue for \u201cWhat Sand Paper Might Say.\u201d\u00a0 It wracks my body; it dims my soul.<\/p>\n
It does not seem likely that I can make it to this marathon.\u00a0 I suppose there is still a chance.\u00a0 It\u2019s that misbegotten faith in the exception to the odds that has usually rational people plunk down money on a lottery ticket or place a bet on Red 5 at the Roulette wheel.\u00a0 There is a chance\u2026 it\u2019s just the house is destined to win and you are destined to lose.<\/p>\n
And in the insanity of the \u201cit could happen to you\u201d-ness of bucking the odds and walking away a winner, I know that by not going to Carlsbad I will definitely lose.\u00a0 A Did Not Start is worse than a Did Not Finish which is worse than a Last Place Finish.\u00a0 But what if by going my cough regroups the germs to launch a massive onslaught and I wind up needing ever more time away from running to recover.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 The correct answer is not to go to run on Sunday.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s the right answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My fever broke on Tuesday night\/Wednesday morning.\u00a0 Whether it was the four days of 2:30 AM wake-ups, the Petri dish that is a race start line featuring germs and ailments from all corners of the world, or just an inscrutable twist of fate, I came down with a flu-like illness either during the Walt Disney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}