In Sickness and in Health

Health is not valued till sickness comes.
Thomas Fuller

I try to be keenly appreciative of my health. I consider it a blessing and a gift that I am nearing 40 with no major health issues yet.

That being said, I often fail in my attempt to offer thanks for my health until I find myself sick. Like today. Right now I'm not feeling 100%. I don't know if it's allergies or a virus, but my throat hurts and I'm generally achy. It's just a speed bump compared to more serious diseases, but if you ask my wife I'm sure she would tell you that I'm unbearable when I'm feeling this way.

So I looked forward to my lunchtime run for a different reason than normal today. I expected the achy feelings to ease after a warm-up and the heart rate to be generally higher at the same pace as non-sick runs. I wanted to analyze the correlation between sickness and heart rate during a run.

My hypothesis of a slower pace for the same HR followed through 3.5 miles -- an 8:03 pace at a HR of 135 BPM. And then something happened like a switch flipping, and I felt perfectly fine. I ran the next 4 miles at 7:41 with the same HR. I'm not sure what to make of that except that perhaps increasing my HR over my resting rate helped to temporarily flush out whatever was causing my ailment.

Overall: 7.38 M, 58:12, 7:53 pace, 135 avg HR