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Illness Before a Race — Back Off
Update! I was really feeling down on my odds when I wrote the stuff below (having gotten sick too many times over the years from my kids), but the good news is that my issue has mostly cleared up, my daughter is improving, and I think now that the issue was about something in my diet which I need to track down— perhaps wheat or gluten that sets me off, because putting two and two together, a similar thing happened last wee and both times an unusual amount of wheat products were scarfed (though that’s a wild guess).. Until the race, it’s a simple diet for me!
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The disease vector that public schools foist upon us rears its ugly head at the start of every school year. Irresponsible parents send kids to school coughing and shooting out virus-laden snot and sneezes so that they don’t have to bother with child care— and everyone else suffers for it. Every year it’s the same ugly story. I pity the teacher, but that’s a hazard of the job. I say have a zero tolerance policy towards illness.
And so after months of illness-free life in my family, my daughter now has a sore throat and runny nose (she is home so as not to infect others at school, the only ethical thing to do).
And I now have sinus pressure and a headache and tiredness, and a real fear that my 9 months of unrelenting training will all be for naught in terms of the Everest Challenge. I am very susceptible and slow to recover from sinus and pulmonary infections (just the way my body seems to work), so I deem my chances 50/50. I have halted my training (cannot afford to stress myself now), and all I can do is eat, rest and hope for a stroke of luck that this resolves within 8 days. The Everest Challenge cannot be done at less than 100% of healthy.
