Shooting for a 10…

I’ve read numerous articles about how quickly you start to lose your cardio conditioning when you’re not working out. It’s kind of scary how you can start to regress if you’re inactive for as little as two weeks.

Now, if you’re suffering from a serious injury or certain kinds of illnesses, working out is simply out of the equation. You need to rest and recover or you can make things even worse.

As for me, I’ve been nursing this nasty cough for two weeks (since the Hot Chocolate 15K on Feb. 4th). Just read my prior post (“Hackety Hack”) if you want more of the deets. I’m cranky when I miss a regularly scheduled workout… and being on the sideline for over a week was really making me bonkers.

Fortunately, this week the cough started lightening up. It was still there mind you, but not as nasty as it had been and much better during the daytime.

We’re feeling better.

On Tuesday I hit the treadmill at the gym, walking for a bit and then trying a very slow 5K. It was my litmus test to see how my body would react. Would I feel okay or would the exercise send me spiraling back into hardcore hacking fits? I got through relatively cough-free and it also felt nice to get the sweat going. So far, so good.

On Thursday I upped the ante a tad and did a slow (and slightly hilly) 4-mile jaunt outside. It’s been raining a lot here lately and I was fortunate to find a several hour window where the sky was clear. I certainly didn’t want to tempt fate and go right back to running in the rain. If I did that I think my lungs would have staged a mutiny. But while my pace was pretty slow, my hacking again was minimal.

So time to really give those lungs a workout. I’ve got the Atlanta Half Marathon in four weeks and to get “sorta” back on schedule, I needed to run 10-miles this weekend. On Saturday morning, it was, of course, raining outside so I had to bump 24 hours for a break in the weather.

It seems that things are a “go.”

As I got to the Chattahoochee River early Sunday, I made a promise to myself not to push it if things went awry. While I was hoping to run 10 miles, I would have settled for less if my body complained. And the goal for the day was distance and not speed. Log the miles and see how the body holds up.

Thankfully, the run went better than expected. A little hacking in the first quarter mile, but that was all (I equated it to starting up your car on a cold morning). As the miles started adding up, I think I felt even stronger and picked up the pace just a bit in the last mile or two.

Not a memorable run otherwise… with the big takeaway being that all systems seem to be “go” to get back to my regular workout schedule. I’ll be hitting the pool (after two weeks off) tomorrow morning for some lap work and then maintenance runs this week with 11-miles scheduled for the weekend.

The only wildcard right now is the weather. The temperature is heating up a bit in the ATL this week (thankfully), but with rain currently in the forecast for both Saturday and Sunday, I might have to move my long run up to Friday. But I’ll adjust. Right now I’m just happy to be back at it.

Ditch the cough… and Run on!