Having been a runner for almost 44 years, I know my body. I am very consistent in my training and performances as well as nutrition and lifestyle habits, so when I start to not run well, I know that my body is fighting off something. On Thanksgiving Day this past year, I was exposed to someone who was quite sick and that combined with significant relationship stress and the same financial stress that everyone else was experiencing in our weak economy resulted in me getting sick on that Saturday. I always run 6 days a week and usually run 7, but this time I couldn’t because my body was producing so much mucus to encapsulate the virus that between nose blowing and fatigue, I couldn’t.
I can’t ever remember blowing my nose as much as I did in that coming week, but I did start walking in order to offset the fact that I wasn’t running and walked about 40:00 every morning without fail.
I teach in the children’s ministry at our church and I am fairly sure that it was there that I picked up swine flu. That following week saw an escalation of symptoms to include a cough that was so persistent and so bad that I actually strained a muscle in my abdomen. That was when I sought the advice of my doctor and he recommended that I take black walnut extract and elderberry syrup together to knock out the virus. I followed his suggestion but saw only marginal improvement.
During this time, though, I should note that I worked full time and also took care of both girls full time and walked every morning no matter what. I credit my ability to do that to the fact that I do work out year round and stay very fit and also that I have been drinking Shakeology every day since March. Although the stress in my life was too much for even Shakeology to keep me healthy, I was still completely functional. Given how badly I felt, I think that is a great testament to the benefits of the 70 healthy ingredients in Shakeology.
Blood tests the following week revealed that my normally challenging schedule wasn’t allowing for enough energy to get me healthy and I developed pneumonia. I then started taking the Now brand Super Odorless Garlic and two courses of that finally got me healthy enough to do a walk/run on December 27th and another the next day as well as about 10:00 each day of strength training.
I started running again on Tuesday, December 29th and was able to end the year by covering just over 2 miles in 11:31 pace as embarrassing as that is to say.
On January 1st, I started on a plan to run a 5k a day and I have consistently done that. I started the month running 10:31 pace and today lowered my pace on a 4 mile run to 9:06. With the cough still lingering and obvious congestion in my lungs, my concern is long term damage from the swine flu. I read an article in CNN Health about how the swine flu virus gets deep into the lungs and does its most damage there. The article is “H1N1 virus attacks deep into the lungs” and you can read it by clicking here.
Knowing my body as well as I do from running, I guess that I will be a test case to see if the H1N1 virus caused long term damage or whether my body can eventually heal itself. I will post updates here to let you know the outcome of my “field testing”!
