I worked out on Monday and Tuesday because I was feeling a lot better (relative to my cold).  My run performance on Tuesday wasn’t great and I coughed and hacked and sneezed up about a gallon of phlegm afterwards.  But I haven’t managed to kick the last lingering effects of the cold.

I’ve got some congestion and hacking cough left.  Because of that – and because of my inherent laziness – I took today off and didn’t lift or run (either of which would have been acceptable workouts).

But I’ve decided that I can’t go without regular workouts any longer.  Who knows how long it would be if I waited until I was 100%, unquestionably, perfectly healthy again.  I’m health ENOUGH.  I’m going to go ahead and pick back up with normal workouts tomorrow.  No health related excuses.  Hopefully I work through my last symptoms without a relapse.

For me running is difficult and unnatural that this statement is true even after just a week.

I ran this evening for the first time since I got sick two weekends back.  And while it FELT okay, the same level of perceived effort was 2-minutes slower over 4-miles than just two weeks ago.  Oh, the damage done.

Another health related item of note is that over the ten days or so that I wasn’t working out to to active illness or active recovery I actually lost weight.

Turns out that not having an appetite and feeling to poorly to go out to eat bad food actually has effects.  As you should know by now, I don’t really care much about my weight and none of my goals really have any connection to my weight, but I have a fancy ANT+ scale and it makes graphs in my Garmin Connect so from time to time I feel the need to show them and say something about it.  So, voila.  Another 5-pounds or so and I’ll be close to the weight I boxed intramurals in my Firstie year at West Point (that’s senior year for you civilian college goers).

So just as I was getting back into a good rhythm and building the oh-so-important positive inertia, I got sick.  I spent about four days in a good solid feverish cold.  So obviously during that period I wasn’t working out.  Then I took a few extra days to make sure I was over it and wouldn’t cause a relapse by exercising too hard too soon.

Then I just skipped today because I was lazy (the bad inertia was in full swing).  But by eight o’clock at night I was going insane from antsiness so I went down to the gym and did my standard four exercise weight lifting routine for when I’m just trying to get some general exercise (bench press, pull up, leg press, standing military press).  Then I threw in some bicep curls because of reasons.

It was good.  Totally a “anything is better than nothing” type of workout.  I was planning to get up and get a run in tomorrow morning but the beauty of time zones means I have a conference call at 0630.  Which means that tomorrow’s workout is going to happen at some to be determined time.

I also know that I still owe my second half of the year goals post.  Working on it.  I’m playing around with charts and data in Excel and have gone down a rabbit hole.  I’ll try to get something interesting, clear and SMART soon.

To not work out?  That’s the question today as I woke up with a fever and sore throat combined with general body aches.  I made the executive decision after significant hemming and hawing to skip my planned run workout for today.

Now, 15-hours later, I feel slightly better but still not close to 100%.  I think it was a wise decision to hold off on the workout.  I’m especially bummer because I was in a good rhythm and I was looking forward to working out today.

Here’s hoping that I can shake this bug quickly and get back on track.

If something doesn’t work exactly as intended the odds of my figuring it out and getting it to work are slim to none.  That said, here’s what I wanted to post two days ago.

I went on vacation last week and spent a fantastic time with my extended family (father’s side) in the Pacific northwest.