exhausted

I went to a four-day seminar in Santa Fe over the last week-end, very intense, from morning to evening. No way I could do a long run, but I managed to squeeze in over an hour of running Saturday morning, and it was mesmerizing to do it at dawn in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Then I got a fever.

First I thought it was the run - only five miles, but at 7,800 feet it might have tipped the scale toward exhaustion. Then I thought it was stress over the seminar, not a comfortable affair. A Reiki practitioner who saw me that evening concluded I was working too hard.

The fever broke during the night but I am still not well - first it was a headache, then a tummy ache, then a sore throat, today I lost my voice. The bad part is being sick turns me off from running. I cannot envision doing a 16-miler this week-end without getting myself ever sicker.

I said Shiprock, in three weeks from now, will be my last marathon. For a while I wasn't sure, since I spotted one in Taos in June and started plotting how to get there. Now, again, I do not know if I am even able to do Shiprock. The heroic focus I exerted for El Paso while sick for weeks, it might have worked once, but it seems insane to repeat it.