For the past week plus I’ve been sick. Debilitatingly sick. I haven’t run a single step since finishing the Kathmandu Urban Marathon. I’ve lumped it on my couch… and in my bed… and stuffed my face with whatever odds and ends I could find in my kitchen, calories and nutritional value be damned. Only yesterday did I broach 50% of healthy feeling. I’m due to run a marathon in Nebraska’s state capital tomorrow and I’m not sure how that’s going to go. I guess we will see how well my core foundation of training has held, how quickly it’s fallen into disrepair, and how much it’s quantifiable crumbled in the age of whining sloth.
This is as sick as I’ve been in a while. Nothing I tried seemed to offer any relief and improvement has been glacially slow. But this ticket, prepaid using miles and points and various other non-refundable elements, meant I risk only time and what small gains in health I’ve accrued by doing nothing for eight or nine days. Plus, I couldn’t stay on that couch another day, sore throat and stuffy head notwithstanding. I wish I felt better but some days it’s more important to break a depression than it is to rest.
My flight this morning was at 5:45 am. This always seems like a good idea until the alarm goes off at 2:30 so I can shower and drive to the park n ride to get through security and to the gate an hour or so before boarding. I barely slept last night worried about missing the alarm. How many times have I slept through an alarm in my life? Less than five I’m confident in saying. And yet… perpetual worry as it only takes one to muck up the house of cards that is my life and it’s schedule.
I’m still feeling sick and tired but I’m tired of being sick and sick of being tired.
To Lincoln I fly… well, to Omaha I fly and then by car to Lincoln.
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A recurrent thought throughout today: “Man, I wish I felt better.” It’s actually been a recurrent thought this past ten days or so but today I am *so close* to feeling *almost* within striking distance of *not terrible.* Just a smidge more, the difference in a hotel bath’s water spigot between lukewarm and scalding hot, that micromeasurement difference is all that I need. Sigh.
As I ambled through the Omaha Airport Terminal, I passed this kiosk and flashed as I often do on such opportunities to that cruise ship comedian’s joke about how in China, “Chinese food” is just called “food.” I’ve asked Mom probably 72 times if I’ve asked her once and still I can’t remember the guy’s name. I want to say… Tom? Tom Deliccio? That can’t be right… anyway, in reference to the below, shouldn’t the sigb just say “Steaks?”
It’s about an hour drive out to Lincoln. The thing I noticed is they sure do love their cornhusker football out here. I knew that but I didn’t *know* that, ya know? It was only in seeing it in person that I really felt I grok’d it, to use a Robert A. Heinlein phrasing.
Anyhoo, the Lincoln Marathon packet pickup was at the Marriott Cornhusker. It was a fairly standard bib and merch and expo affair…
However I got suckered into buying a tee shirt. I have bags of things earmarked for eventual goodwill runs but still I couldn’t resist this one…
I’ve been a little down on the USA thanks to a government seemingly spearheaded by John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces. But who can resist the 16th President rocking a sweatband and intoning, “one score and 6.2 miles ago…?”
I feel like I wasted $10… especially when the posters were free on my way out…
I was feeling guilty I wasn’t sightseeing much with my time in Nebraska. I just wish I felt better. (See! I told you it was a recurrent thought! Like Honest Abe I am, I am…).
I thought I owed it to the town to at least see what I was missing. Thus, a check of roadsideamerica.com yielded a few choice possibilities. I skipped the purportedly inordinately large chicken that a reviewer said was just large and not inordinately so… but I was tempted by the gasoline motor powered roller skates on display at the National Museum of Rollerskating…
I even figured maybe I’d go check it out… until I checked the visiting hours.
I guess weekends is skate time so, ya know, they’re only open weekdays 9 to 5. Weekdays 9 to 5?! How many roller skater aficionados do they get during the week? How many skateheads feign illness to call in sick to work so they can play hookey and then do the hokey pokey at the roller rink archives? This place alone is responsible for demonstratable dips in productivity in the Lincoln area…
Outraged and yet invigorated to find something worthy of visiting, I decided this was my play:
I don’t know… sometimes I just get the feeling like I’m being watched… ya know?
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To wrap up for today, I wish I felt better. Not sure what tomorrow will bring. Kinda just running it because everything was paid for and I figure I’m a mess anyway. No aspirations other than hoping to finish and get a shower before flying back in the evening.
Run Kevin Run Dot Com – Lowering expectations with each passing day.