Disease-itis

It took me a good week to get over the lag. Jet lag? Well, the time difference between Bali and Canberra is only two hours, and the plane trip is only five. However, travelling on the red-eye and getting a total of ten minutes sleep can knock an old girl around.

It took me the next week to break the wide-awake-at-night, so-tired-during-the-day routine, as well as adjusting to the return to Canberra winter. I was aiming to get straight back into the City to Surf training on the Tuesday as normal, but just couldn't drag myself out of bed.

Finally on the Saturday I went for a long run with my sister Jane. The training program had us running 14kms. I figured I could take it sloooowwwww, and Jane agreed, seeing as she had slackened off her training in the absence of her training partner. We ran from Coolo Maccas on the long incline up Hindmarsh Drive, then up the steep hill onto Cooleman Ridge. This is a good run because it kind of simulates C2S with Heartbreak Hill at the 6km mark.

Start of the hill at the 6km mark

The shuffle up Hindmarsh hurt. I was also still a little sore from my osteopathy appointment on the Thursday, in which my osteo (who is an absolute genius and a gift from the heavens) got stuck into my calves/shins to loosen them up. My previous training session had been the fantastic 8 x 1kms in Singapore, but this run brought me crashing back to earth and had me cursing the laziness and cocktails of Bali.

The view from Cooleman Ridge is beautiful, right across western Canberra to Black Mountain. We started the run at 6.30am, later than usual, but even so I could see the difference in the light since my last long run prior to the trip. Hopefully we are on the downhill run towards spring.

Made it around Cooleman Ridge OK at slow pace, then off the ridge and down Namatjira Drive. You always think you're going to enjoy the downhill, but prior experience has taught me that this is where potential runner's trots issues and stitches kick in. And sure enough, so it went for both of us.

We battled through it until my watch had us at 14kms and I delightedly announced to Jane that we were done. She checked her iphone and said 'but we've only done 12.5'. Shit. My watch is out. Which probably also explains the awesome times I did in my last session in Singapore!

Heartbroken, we trudged on, until I could trudge no more, 400m later. Jane continued on and I walked the rest of the way back to Coolo. Not a good end to the session, but at least I'd gotten some kms back into my legs.

I knew I'd be hurting after that run, so I did 5 x cold bath/hot shower and wore my compression socks in the arvo. That night we had 8 friends over for our annual Christmas in July dinner, which we've been doing for 6 years now. The night was fantastic as usual, full hot Christmas dinner with the trimmings, plenty of great wine and LOTS of laughter. My socks were so comfy by that stage that I wore them to bed. Big mistake, as it turned out.

The next day my right leg was a little sore near where my socks ended, just below my knee on the inside of the leg. Didn't think much of it, and the rest of me hadn't pulled up too badly from the run. But the next day my leg continued to be sore, and a lump had appeared and the skin around the area was red and hot to the touch.

I went to my GP on Tuesday to have it checked out, and he took one look at it and told me it was cellulitis, a gross skin infection. He cheerily told me that, had I be born before the invention of antibiotics, it would have become gangrenous and I would have dropped dead. Nice. He also told me I was to do zero exercise until it cleared up, which would probably take two courses of antibiotics and a few weeks.

Bye bye C2S 2011.

So annoyed. There are a number of possible causes for cellulitis, including insect bites, and it is a staph or strep infection. So I blamed the mozzies in Bali. Until I told my osteo about it and she was horrified to hear that I'd worn compression socks to bed. Never never never do that, apparently.

A week later, part-way through the second course of antibitotics, the lump had become bigger and harder. I went back to my GP, who reassured me it was going OK, but that from the nature of the lump he now thought it had started with an inflammation of a vein (hello compression socks), and the infection had started in the nearby skin cells. The bacteria still had to be in my system somehow though, so I'm still part-blaming the mozzies!

The lump was a little painful, especially after a long day on my feet, but apart from that I felt fine. Which is really frustrating when you're into running/netball/gym. It took me a few days to get over the fact I'd be missing C2S.

My siblings had all decided to do C2S this year, and we'd decided to use the run to raise money for the Alzheimers Association, as a way of honouring our three grandparents who have passed away since Christmas. All four of our grandparents had/have dementia/alzheimers. Our Nana is still alive but quite severely affected by Alzheimers. So there was the added disappointment of not being able to do the run on their behalf.

After getting over the inital disappointment, I have to admit I kind of enjoyed not having any exercise commitments. I missed the actual exercise, but it was nice not having the early mornings of running, or the late nights of netball, or the scheduled gym sessions. But the talk about C2S and the excitement leading up to it was hard to hear.

The sibs plus my brother-in-law-to-be raised $3,550 for Alzheimers, a great effort. Maurice, Marie, Jim and Sheila were all sports lovers, and Jim and Sheila (our Canberra-based grandparents) came along to all our sporting events when we were kids, and even the bigger events in adulthood. Our beautiful grandies would probably have told us we were mad for running 14kms. But they would have been quietly proud too.