Testing the illness...

Monday, September 19, 2011

I slept until about 5 a.m. before my sinus blockage and lack of breathing had me up. I could see I wouldn’t be going to work…I needed to beat this thing…so I used the nasal spray and went back to bed. I was up by 8 and after calling clients to tell them I would have to reschedule, went about trying to find a doctor that would look at me quickly. I tried the Cleveland Clinic in Willoughby Hills because I was told they took same-day patients, but found they weren’t taking them today. John suggested Urgent Care and I figured I’d give them a try if I got desperate…which I wasn’t just yet. I really don’t want to go into the mountains and sleep in the cold night air feeling the way I do, but Paul was coming from Alaska for this trip and unless I was suffering from pneumonia, I’d be going. I drove to Giant Eagle and purchased the things I’d need for your meals and came home to organize my gear and make the food.

I whipped up a delicious batch of pinole and made some gorp (good old raisins and peanuts…with M&M’s) but added banana chips to make it more paleo. It qualifies as something a paleo athlete would eat while competing to spare glycogen stores and keep the blood sugar where it ought to be. Actually, I use the pinole to serve that purpose and bring gorp as a tradition. John loves it and will snack on it throughout the trip. I also made some spaghetti. I boil the noodles ahead and put them in a Ziploc bag with sauce and frozen meatballs and carry this in to our first site for that first night’s dinner. After that, it’s most freeze-dried stuff that can be put easily in a bear canister to keep those giant raccoon-type critters out of the camp site and away from our food (and us).

By late afternoon I’d developed the notion that I should go for a run to determine how much the cold/upper respiratory infection was affecting my stamina. I figured a 30-40 minute effort would tell me what I needed to know without hurting myself. There was a misty rain falling as I exited the car. I’d been thinking I might combine the run with a Survival Workout, so I dropped in the mud and did 60 push-ups before starting down the trail at a fast jog. The run seemed easy though I elected not to do the workout too…I’d save that for the next day if I didn’t have any repercussions from the run. I finished strongly, running the last mile around a 7-minute pace and climbed back into the car thinking that although I had a stuffed-up head, I could climb.

Run workout: 35 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 150 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 550.