Seems that after struggling through the injuries, the bad weather and all the adversity of this training cycle, i’m not done fighting for this marathon. I am one week away from being on the shuttle bus to the Ocean Drive marathon, and I have a head cold. Yep, its slowly been coming on since Friday, and although I don’t feel like complete crap, my head is stuffed. I’ve got my Ocean nasal spray, nyquil and claritin, along with my vitamin C. I feel the worst in the morning, slowly feeling better during the day until its bed-time.

Since its sunday, and I had this yesterday, I consider tomorrow to be the turning point. Either i’m going to feel great tomorrow, or feel like crap tomorrow. I think i’m going to goto the doctor regardless after work just to get an anti-biotic to be safe. If I start antibiotics tomorrow, i can guarantee that i’ll feel better by next weekend, even if its not really an infection.

It never ends, although its funny that I felt about the same last year at this time when I was getting ready to run the 10-miler ocean drive run. I remember after running it, I ended up with a major sinus infection 4 days later …. seems its coming early this year.

I know I can struggle through this, I have to get in 11-12 miles today as my LAST longer run before an easy week ahead. I reviewed my strategy for carbo-loading and running for the week … I intend to take Monday off, do a 4 miler on Tuesday, a 4 miler on Wednesday, and take Thursday and Friday off… then run about 2-3 miles on Saturday just to get the legs fresh. I will carbo load starting Wednesday and consume gallons and gallons of water starting Thursday. This worked well for me last time, so I expect the same result this time.

I’m going to measure myself now, and record my sizes to see how far off I am from when I ran Steamtown. It’ll be interesting, and will hopefully give me some confidence that i can get through this marathon next week.