Up and down

I arrived home KL Friday night (9 Oct), at my now regular time, which is late after 12 midnight. I have recently started leaving for the KL home after going home for dinner and a shower Friday night, which means I depart at about 8.15pm or so. The blinding rush to get home has since abated, because I know the family will be together very soon, and before long, there will not the need to squeeze out every minute of the weekend; we will have the entire weekend together. In fact, as I am writing this, the family is down in Spore for 2 weeks and we are living like a real family.

Running and fitness-wise, this has been a strange weekend past. I have been feeling under the weather all week before, body aches, slight fever and a general lack of alertness. This has been brought on by the lack of sleep all week, as well as a virus that has been going around the KL home, ready to hit Nisa and I any time now. This feeling of malaise lasts all through the day, goes away in the night when I run, and starts all over again just before I sleep. I am clearly coming down with something. What has made this feeling worse is the fact I have not been able to find a replacement for my Powerbar drink and hence I have not been hydrating properly. I cannot say enough of the need to get proper hydration and recovery after a run; the first time that I had fluids with a carbo/protein mix, I immediately felt recovered within 2 hours. For the last 3 weeks or so, its just been plain water after a run, and sometimes with a cup of milk thrown in. Not enough for me.

It was a strange weekend because notwithstanding the malaise, I managed to do a fast 8k, followed by a 10k 48hrs later. The 10k was not done at the usual plodding pace but was somewhat fast, on the Fastwitch. I could not explain how I could do all this running and yet feel ill at the same time.

This strange weekend continued over to Saturday/Sunday just past. It has been a while since I did my runs at Kiara and Lake Gardens/Tugu Negara, and I did not know what to expect. I definitely needed to fulfill the sleep quota over the weekend and I set my mind to do so after the Saturday run. Saturday morning, Nisa and I went to Bukit Kiara and I surprised myself by literally flying up the hills, stopping twice (which I am hoping is now a regular feature, insya-Allah). I was pretty pleased with the outcome and felt good. I went home and slept all through the day, getting up only for lunch and dinner. This feeling of malaise did not go away after the sleep.

Sunday morning - could not get up for the run. Nisa is ill and wanted to sleep in a little. We got up nonetheless and got to Lake Gardens in time to collect our racing bibs for the Mizuno Wave Run at Serdang. We arrived at 9.15am and there was already a queue - no surprises there as runners are generally early risers. We got our bibs and singlets and left for pancakes at 9.40am. Pancakes are comfort food for Nisa and I but they did not do anything for me this time. I went back home to sleep again. Got up and went to Kiara in the afternoon to tackle the hills again and this time I landed up winded, gasping - I probably walked up a third of the hill. Feeling dis-satisfied, I did hill repeats for the first time in my life; and ended up feeling worse for the effort.

At the end of the weekend and through the drive home to Spore, I realised I needed a proper running log. The log would chart the ups and downs, and provide an explanation of why I'm feeling like this. But no one need tell me why I'm feeling like this - I just need some rest and get off bloody Facebook!!!