It's all Jane's fault.

So I'm sitting here all flemmy and coughing and I don't know why and I know I'm going to miss my long run tomorrow and I've decided that it's all Jane's fault.

I've tried experimenting: taking benedryl, and then waiting for it to wear off, and then a compresensive cold medicine, and waiting for it to wear off, and then a comprehensive allergy medicine, and waiting for it to wear off; the hypothesis was that if I compared the results among all three, I could tell what it was from which one actually worked. The experiment was a complete failure because none of them worked, and I think Sweet Baboo is tired of the very wet sounds coming from my head, but loves me too much to do anything but turn up the volume on whatever it is we're listening to so he doesn't have to hear it. He hates bodily excretions, and so do I.

Sunday is normally my long run day, and I'm probably going to try trotting it out on the treadmill, because slow running is about all I can handle right now. Even on my normal days running I produce an impressive amount of snot, but right now even I find myself disgusting, so I'm going to try popping a movie in and stay indoors, not just because it's 20 degrees in the morning here but also because I've had a bit of dizziness along with my generally flemmy snottiness, and as I mentioned before, it's all Jane's fault.

It's all Jane's fault because last week were at an Outlaws meeting and I was kinda sorta but not really bragging about how I don't get cramps, or join pain, or blisters, so nothing keeps me from running outside my own laziness, and she kind of gasped and said, "You better be touching wood when you say that," and I was so I just smiled.

What she didn't tell me, and this is why it's all her fault, is that I was perhaps leaning on laminate at the time instead of solid wood, which for the evil genie that hammers us when we say things like, "Oh, nothing ever keeps me from running," doesn't count. So the evil genie wammied me to remind me to never take anything for granted and that I'm mortal, after all.

The best I can manage right now is about a slow-run pace on a treadmill. I can't do speedwork and I can't run outside or I'll drown in my own snot or double over in some kind of coughing fit.

So now, I finally get it. I've been feeling bad for Sweet Baboo when he couldn't run because of various maladies and broken bones, but in a loving, wifey sort of way. I didn't actually feel his pain, just sensed a general crankiness about him. I also felt bad for Jane, and Helen, and various other friends of mine who have had awful injuries and couldn't run, but I didn't understand what it was like to not be able to run. But now I get it.

There's a huge difference between not running out of pure laziness and not being able to run. The latter is so frustrating that it makes me feel a combination of anger, dispair, and dread that I'm hurtling back through time to the time when I hoped feverently to be able to run a whole 5K some day. As I'm sitting up in bed coughing and blowing my nose I imagine that I can feel the muscles in my legs atrophying. I imagine that I can see the layers of fat forming on my body, my tendons stiffening, and my resting heartrate rising 20-beats to what it used to be, my whole body reverting to it's flabby, former self, unable to even handle a flight of stairs.

So, okay, I get it. And I'm touching real wood this time.

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