Three days lost

Training for a marathon has seemed a distant fantasy for the past three days.



Crossing the line in the 1982 Boston Marathon
(49th in 2:22:39)

I woke early on Sunday morning with a severe headache followed by bouts of vomiting and dry retching and twelve hours later, at Sharon's insistence, was in the local hospital's Emergency Department on a drip having various tests and a brain scan.  The tests failed to show anything untoward and they eventually sent me home with instructions to return if there was no improvement.  I spent the next 36 hours in bed sleeping and dozing.  My headache gradually abated as my ability to keep down fluids and food gradually returned.  There was no thought of any exercise.

Today, although still feeling a bit spaced out, I have returned to the world of the living and am eating and drinking normally.  I'm hoping my ailment was just some kind of 48-hour bug I picked up, though the hospital tests didn't identify any viruses.  I decided not to exercise today either, and will now have missed three complete days.  The downtime seems to have been the catalyst for a more realistic assessment of my marathon training plan.  There was still some specific pain in my right arch when I got up this morning and I have decided I would be smarter to continue resting it than to resume jogging this week as intended.



Showing off my Boston Marathon medal after
the post-race presentation (it is engraved
Top 10, though awarded to each of the top
50 in recognition of the growth in numbers).

I know I am vacillating on the rehabilitation plan, but I am starting to recognise that there's less than 14 weeks to the Melbourne Marathon and my chances of a sub-3 are diminishing with each day that passes when I cannot train properly.  The pressure to resume training too quickly comes from the approaching Melbourne Marathon deadline and the reality is that Melbourne race is not the only race around.  Although I'm getting older as every day passes, there's no real reason why I should run slower in, say, January 2014, than in October 2013.  It's more a function of the length of the injury-free training lead up, than of age.

So, for now, I'm not even going to walk any distance until I feel the right arch is better.  If I'm lucky enough to be running pain-free by the end of next week, then I'm still a chance to be fit enough to run well in Melbourne.  If not, I'll just have to postpone my ambition for a couple of months and hope I get a better training lead-up.