Susie - good to hear from you, though what you have sounds horrible - a nameless malady is very frustrating. You can't start doing any Googling about it and contact fellow-sufferers. But once you've got past the frustration and denial stage of being ill, I always try to see it as a time to focus on other priorities, e..g. work, reading good books, (or watching crap TV if you prefer). We can't expect our bodies just to go on and on. I do hope you get the satisfaction of a name for your ailment soon, and a prognosis and some light at the end of the tunnel.
As for me, I have been pretty cough-free for the last week, and it made a huge difference to my speed at Tuesday's threshold session - I was 20-30 seconds a mile faster than the previous week!
But it's be pure Baltic here in the Metropolops too: Wednesday's club run had my feet so cold (despite double socks), that I was getting painful cramp in my toes by the end.
And on Sunday, in the ancestral homelands of Southwold, where I was visiting the Aged Parent to do his bidding (while he criticsed from his armchair) on his discharge from hospital, I managed to get out for a 16-miler in stunning sunshine and sub-zero temperatures. The surf was magnificent, and I explored some wild and lonely places (e.g. Covehithe beach, where tree-stumps grow out of the sea), Southwold pier in winter, the harbour and common. And I saw only one other runner (oddly in the remotest and loneliest part of the run). There were dog-walkers, bikers, surfers and kite-surfers and even the RNLI men out on an exercise (they were also scattering ashes they told me later), but runners are rare in winter in that part of the world.
Still very unsure if I'll make it to the FLM - every other long run seems a huge mental challenge, requiring every trick I know to complete it. And I have other pressures on my time (sick dad; non-running BF) these days, despite a loyally supportive son. Still, one day at a time eh?
