Recovery (Run)

After my race Sunday, I woke on Monday ready to attack the next week's training. Monday was a rest day, so I slept in, stretched a lot and concentrated on work.

Unfortunately, by that night, some germs decided to attack me. Specifically, they attacked my bladder, resulting in a screaming urinary tract infection that kept me up all night and prevented my planned 50-minute recovery run planned for Tuesday morning. I stayed home from work, went to the doctor, got some antibiotics and rested.

I felt better, though still not great, on Wednesday morning. I figured I'd quickly improve that day, though (I've had UTIs before and always kick 'em quick once I get the drugs), so not only did I go to work but I packed some running things with me, figuring I could get that recovery run in on break and get myself back on schedule with that recovery run.

Again, the germs had other plans. By the end of the work day, my bladder pain was worse than ever and, even worse than that, had spread to my entire lower abdomen and up the right side of my back. One of the managers admonished me to go home, so I went back to my desk and called my doctor. He told me to head straight to the ER.

Turns out my UTI (which though painful was at least familiar) had headed on up the line and infected my kidney. After six hours in the ER and two different kinds of IV antibiotics, they let me go home. Yesterday (Thursday) I spent in bed, except for a check-in with my doc. But the pain was vastly better, and this morning I'm feeling mostly like myself.

So--finally--I went for that recovery run.

Lucky for me, my doctor works out of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. He's the same one who helped with my Morton's neuroma back in February. He's not the kind of guy who tells you not to run if he doesn't have a good reason. What he told me was to do easy runs until Sunday. If I feel good then, he said, I can start to push it again a little.

Best of all, he doesn't think it will set back my marathon training. Which of course is what I was most worried about once my back stopped aching.

Today's run was an easy five miles. I let it fill an entire 50 minutes. I got a side stitch, but other than that felt nothing adverse. Mostly I felt grateful.