Not home to run today

I left home at 6:30 am and returned at 9:45 pm, so I didn't run today. My cold is gone, and I feel fine am looking forward to Monday.

Homeopathy and colds

If you've read much in my blog, you realize that I like the outdoors, natural things, animals, birds. One of the reasons I enjoy running is because it gets me outside where I become part of nature.

My enjoyment of natural things extends to the healing of colds. I use homeopathic remedies instead of traditional medicine. For example, I haven't had an aspirin in 40 years, maybe longer. Except for the first 24 hours or so after serious surgery, I don't take "pain killers". In a way, my use of homeopathic remedies is part of my running since my health is part of my running. If you're not interested in reading about homeopathy, feel free to skip the rest of this post.

Homeopathic remedies aren't drugs. They don't heal me. They don't dull my nerves so I feel less pain. They don't have side effects. They can be given to small children. They act like a catalyst and get my body to heal itself.

My colds have two phases. First is the "thin mucus" phase. That is followed by the "thick mucus" phase. The remedies I take for a cold depend on the phase I'm in. All of the remedies I use are 30X, where 30X refers to the potency of the remedy. When living in Massachusetts I used 30C, which is more potent, but here in Utah the health food stores don't carry 30C. The stores do carry 6X, but I use the more potent 30X.

Thin-Mucus Phase

During the first 24 hours of a cold, I'll take 1 tablet of Aconitum Napellus every 3 or 4 hours. During the remainder of this phase, I'll take 1 tablet of Euphrasia AND 1 tablet of Allium Cepa every 3 or 4 hours.

Thick-Music Phase

Once my cold progresses to the thick, yellowish phase, I switch to 1 tablet of Pulsatilla AND 1 tablet of Hepar Sulph every 3 or 4 hours.

That's it. These remedies do wonders with my colds.

As a side note, homeopathic remedies are very diluted, and I have to be careful to not pollute them with food residues in my mouth or body grease from my fingers. I never touch the tablets. I pour one tablet into the bottle lid and then drop it into my mouth. I use my tongue to push the tablet under my tongue and then let it dissolve (5-10 seconds). I take them 15 minutes before I eat or brush my teeth, or one hour after I've done those things.

The reason that I use different remedies in each of the two phases is that homeopathic remedies are used to treat symptoms not ailments. The thin or thick mucus is a symptom. The cold is the ailment. The remedies I mentioned can be used for other ailments as well as for colds. For example, when my daughter, Tova, was young, she had an aversion to fat -- she would suffer serious nausea when she ate foods containing fat. When she was in middle school and high school and would go on a school trip, she took Pulsatilla with her, and that allowed her to eat fast foods with no nausea. By the time she entered college, she had grown out of that aversion.

Running through colds

Most runners get an occasional cold, and they wonder if they should run through the cold or take a day or two of rest. Each runner has to answer that question, because we all have different bodies and thus different energy-levels and different immune systems. Here are a few things to consider.

If a person has a strong immune system, the person probably won't get colds, because running, when done properly, should strengthen our immune systems. In fact, we can usually consider a cold as a sign from our body that we're doing something wrong, such as getting insufficient sleep, having too much stress in our lives, getting inadequate nutrition, or pushing ourselves too much in our training. I have a cold right now because I pushed myself too much in my two-hour run on Wednesday.

When we have a cold, we may take meds to help us breath, to suppress the symptoms of the cold so we can go into public activities and not cough and sneeze a lot, but those meds don't cure the cold. Only our body can cure the cold, and to do that our body must have enough energy to overcome the cold. Thus, getting rest, liquids, and proper nutrition when we have a cold will help our body have the energy it needs.

Should you run through a cold? My answer is "yes" if you feel pretty good and have a relatively high energy-level. My answer is "no" if you feel tired, down in the dumps, so to speak. When I was younger, I used to run through colds. Now that I'm older, I usually don't run in the "thin mucus" stage but will run in the "thick mucus" stage if I feel pretty good. I only get one or two colds per year, and they are usually from over training, so I don't have to worry much about running or resting during a cold. I know that over training is likely the culprit, and rest is the proper treatment for recovering from over training as well as from the cold.

Yesterday's run was a bit too "great"

Yesterday my body wanted to run faster, and I let it go for about 3 miles of pretty fast (for me) running. During the evening my nose started dripping, and I didn't sleep very well because my body was overly tired. My fastest pace for a 1/4 mile split was 10:31, and I probably should have limited it to 11 minutes. Since my rest runs have been around 12 minutes, an 11 minute pace would still have been a respectable pace.

Getting a cold is a common result when I push myself too much. I've always been grateful that my body comes down with a cold instead of an injury when I do too much. Here is a status report on how I feel this morning. My nose isn't dripping. My legs feel fine. My body feels fine but tired. So, it looks like I'll survive. This evening I'll post an addendum to this post to document how my body is reacting to yesterday's run.

But, I really did enjoy yesterday's run!

Later in the evening: my nose started dripping soon after I made this post, and it has been dripping all day. I had a half hour nap in the afternoon, and I'm heading for bed now to get a good 7+ hours.

Next day: my nose hasn't been dripping since I got up this morning, about two hours ago. I feel pretty good, and I may go out for an easy run later today.

My cold is almost gone

My cold was very "drippy" on Saturday and Sunday, but on Monday it went into the "thick mucus" stage and has been in that stage today. I would have run yesterday, but my daughter drove down from Evanston, WY (90 miles) to help me with the DVD I'm making of the Evanston Messiah program that was held in December. She sang with the choir.

Here is a word of warning to everyone who reads this blog: The only people who get colds are those with weak immune systems. If you get proper rest, eat nutritious food and don't eat food with a lot of additives, and have a good exercise program, you shouldn't get any colds because you should have a strong immune system. So, when you get a cold, consider that a warning that perhaps you should look at your life-style to see why your immune system couldn't fight off the cold. Disclaimer: this post is not intended as medical advice. For medical advice, see a doctor.

Taking a rest day today

During the night my nose started to drip and I coughed up a small amount of phlegm. In addition, my wakeup HR is back to 55. I thus decided to take a rest day. When I was younger I would run through colds, but at my age, I have to give my body more rest to help it recover from colds. Resting today will give me a better chance of running all four days next week.

I had planned on running an hour of fartleks today, but the temperature this morning is 10 (F), and I'm not sure I want to do speed in cold weather. So, if I were to run this morning, I probably would have done an easy rest-run.

Still have my cold

My wakeup HR was 50 this morning. I feel fine and am enjoying my rest day in preparation for a long run tomorrow of (hopefully) 1 1/2 hours.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I came down with a cold last Saturday evening. I still have the cold, but it is in the "thick mucus" stage, and it isn't having much effect on my energy level. This cold is like my previous cold, in that my body quickly (2 days) went into the "thick" stage and then took several days to leave the "thick" stage. Before I started running, I would be in the "thin" stage for a week and in the "thick" stage for another week. Now, as a runner, I get fewer colds and usually only if I have insufficient sleep or push myself too hard in my running, and I only stay in the "thin" stage for a day or two.

Down with a cold

I felt fine on Saturday after my run and throughout the day. But, around 10 pm I could tell I was coming down with a cold. Not just a regular cold, but one that sapped my strength. Even though I woke up every hour during the night, I managed to get 8 hours sleep. I got an additional 4 hours in naps during the day on Sunday. I didn't have a lot of energy on Sunday and just rested and napped. By Sunday night I could tell my cold was going away.

This morning, my wakeup HR was about 15% high (53), but I had a lot more energy than I had on Sunday. I'm taking a rest day today and may take one tomorrow, depending on my wakeup HR and how I feel.

I don't get many colds, so when I do get one, I try to figure out why. Part of it is that my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson have had colds this past week. Since they live with us, I've had a lot of exposure to their colds. The other factor is that when I ran the GSL, I really pushed myself hard, harder than I've ever pushed in a race. I was really tired after the race, but I seemed to recover fine. Running an hour and 20 minutes on Saturday may have been too much. I seemed to handle the hour on Wednesday, but that extra 20 minutes might have pushed me over the edge, so to speak.

Training Graphs

Colds? What are they?

My wakeup HR is dropping as fast as it went up last week! It was 51 this morning. I think I've figured out why it went so high, and the cause is related to lack of sleep. A couple of weeks ago I didn't get enough sleep for a night or two, and I picked up a slight cold. My nose dripped a bit and I had an occasional cough that brought up thick, green stuff. My nose was dripping thin mucus. As far as colds go, it was a slight cold, but my HR went up. My cold is pretty much gone and my HR is coming down.

I don't get colds very often. Before I started running, I got several bad colds per year. Then one day I realized I wasn't getting colds anymore. That was about 25 years ago. Even though I'm at an advanced age (69) I don't get flu shots since I have a strong immune system. The only time I get a cold is if I get insufficient sleep or overtrain, both causing my immune system to weaken.

Training Graphs