I've had near zero energy for the past week. While my flu-like illness wasn't the worst I have ever had, it certainly wasn't good either. One of the main downsides was that I was just drained all the time even after just waking up.
I had no appetite either. Thankfully my body was accepting sustenance but I just didn't want very much of it and if I tried to force it I started to feel nauseous so I thought it was better to not tempt fate and instead focused on an almost entirely liquid diet.
There probably wasn't a lot of nuitrition entering my system but my primary focus was staying hydrated so that the fever could run its course. It did so in about 4 miserable days.
I waited another day and then strapped my shoes on and went on my first run in nearly a week.
The results were about what i expected and I am not upset about that.
I stuck with my usual 5k but it became pretty clear at around km number 3 that I was not going to make it all the way through. In normal situations I would have just sucked it up buttercup and powered through but I figured given my weakened state maybe it would be ok to just walk for a bit. Which I did.
You can see the drop in my BPM where that happened.
I'm kind of surprised that I made it as long as I did because trust me, I wanted to stop before that time for sure. When I did "stop" I kept moving, I just needed to get my head right and while my heart rate was in fact lower than I would have been before I got sick, i was drained a lot faster this time around. I suspect that a lot of this has to do with the near complete lack of nutrition in my system. I have eaten almost nothing in the past week and we were just burning fat stores.
So I guess that might be what these intermittent fasting people look like. I now look down on those people though, because I fasted for 6 days!
My pace was pretty trash but that is ok. My only objective was to get out there and remind my body that we still run and that the time off was only because of the impending doom that is a high temperature and an amount of energy that made it difficult for me to go downstairs to pick up delivery protein shakes, which thankfully is something that resides very near my residence.
I discovered during this illness that these protein shakes might be a permanent part of my morning. I don't really enjoy food in the morning anyway, and the shakes have a ton of vitamins in them and more protein than I would normally get from my bacon an eggs anyway.
I don't know, we'll give it a whirl.
The good news about this first-run-after-sickness is that I finished it. It was tough by I got it done and I feel as though I will be able to power through the full 5 k without issue as soon as I am back to 100%. I can tell I am not there yet because it was kind of a slog getting started at all on this run but I am no stranger to various excuses to not run. I had a really good excuse for nearly a week but that time is behind us.
Now let's see if we can get to more around 7 mins per km on the next time around.
