I hate being sick.  When I was younger, I would routinely get the flu once a year – usually around my birthday (February). Since college, though, I’ve been blessed with a pretty good immune system. Other than a nasty cold here and there and the occasional 24-hour bug, I haven’t been sick very much. In fact, I’ve been so healthy that I’ve had perfect attendance at school two years in a row.

Two weeks ago, my luck ran out. I was getting ready to enjoy a nice four day weekend – in other words I was going to get a lot of work done. But Friday I came down with a nasty cough, a horrible headache, and eventually a steady fever. This seemed like a good time to take a few days off.

On Sunday, most of my symptoms were improving, except the cough. I thought I’d go out for an easy jog to stretch out my legs after a few days of sitting around the house. It felt good to get out and stretch, but my legs were so dead I made it about a mile before I stopped and walked home.

Over the next two weeks, I didn’t go out and run.  The first week, my cough was still so bad I didn’t want to run hard. The second week, I intended to go out and get a couple easy workouts in, but I was too busy catching up on work that I missed while sick.

But, finally, I got out yesterday morning for a workout. I went to the park and warmed up. At first, I planned on some speedwork, but after my warmup I didn’t feel quite up to it. Instead, I thought I’d do some 800-meter cruise intervals – a medium intensity stamina workout.

I warmed up with a half mile jog (~4 minutes). My goal was to run six 800 meters at a pace of around 3:20 to 3:30 (around my goal 5k time) with a short walking recovery (2-3 minutes) between each rep.

The first one was good, coming in at 3:27. The second one, my legs felt decidedly fatigued, and I struggled through at 3:40. By the third lap, my legs were really dead and I just barely came in under 4 minutes. At that point, I decided it was time to call it an early day, stretch out, and head home.

It definitely felt good to get out and run, but my legs are definitely worn out from sitting around for a week or two without any exercise. Hopefully a few days of training will whip that fatigue out of them, because my 5k is coming up in just a few weeks – December 12.

I plan on going over to the park later today for a workout, so we’ll see how that goes.