The last two weeks didn’t exactly go to plan. My hopes for a 60km race and some serious running were dashed as sickness continues to plague me. Despite this setback I had a great trip to Cairns visiting my sister and gradually recovered from my illness. Only to catch another virus on the return flight home. I sit here in my 5th week of sickness writing this post hoping for an eventual return to full health. My 100 mile race in 11 weeks!! I desperately need to lock in some big weeks.

In this post I will discuss life after the Tolosa Half, including my health woes and a fun trip to far north Queensland to fulfil my life goal of feeding a Cassowary.

🤧The Aftermath of Tolosa

I fully stitched myself up running a race at full speed whilst sick with multiple viruses (see my race recap). I broke all the common sense rules around running when sick. Generally if symptoms are above the neck running at low intensity can be ok. I had symptoms above and below the neck including a chesty productive cough then proceeded to run at the highest possible intensity.

I paid the price for my actions dearly. Monday and Tuesday were spend off from work sick and I was properly sick. On Monday I was useless. Tuesday I was able to sit at the computer for short periods. This time I decided I would completely rest from running till I was better. On Wednesday I dragged my corpse to work and stressed about how far behind my deadlines I was given I had a week of leave coming up.

By Friday I admitted defeat and acknowledged that I wasn’t able to get everything done. It was a relief to get it off my chest but I was still stressing about my health. And the stressful work deadlines remained for me to come back to after the holiday.

I was experiencing chest pain throughout the week so decided to see a doctor on Friday. He did an ECG and listened to my chest and said he couldn’t rule out pericarditis (inflammation of the sack around the heart). This did not bode well for the race (Kuranda to Port Douglas Ultra) I had planned to run in Cairns.

He advised against racing, gave me a medical certificate to claim back the entry fee and also gave me anti-biotics if my cough persists. I still held out hope of a recovery in time for the race which was still over a week away. I went home and packed my bags including all of my gear to run the race.

I conferred with my sister Georgia who is a GP. She looked at my ECG and said it was normal except for probable left ventricle hypertrophy which is to be expected given how much running I do. I decided to take anti-inflammatories and wait till the pain subsided before running again. The prolonged rest continues 😢

✈️Travelling to Queensland

Lauren and I flew to Cairns Saturday afternoon on flights that both left and arrived on time. It’s funny how an on schedule flight is now a novelty. To engage holiday mode I read a crime fiction novel for the duration of the both flights (Knife by Jo Nesbo), this helped me disconnect from everyday life and focus on murder mysteries is Oslo.

We landed late Saturday evening. My sister, Alice and brother-in-law, Jake picked us up and took us back to their apartment which is essentially a tropical resort where we were staying for the next 8 nights. The trip started off extremely relaxed. Mostly because I was struggling to exist let alone do anything. A 4km walk along the esplanade on Sunday was enough to make me need a lay down. With the cough still lingering I made the decision to try the anti-biotics the doctor prescribed.

Being a Tourist and Returning to Running

Lauren and I enjoyed a relaxed few days with minimal plans. My only goal was to get better. I hoped that rest, drugs and a favourable climate would help me recover. We began a routine of alternating activity days with rest days. Our first activity was the scenic railway to Kuranda. It was a fun and scenic train ride but I didn’t love Kuranda, it seemed like a lot of places up there, extremely ‘touristy’.

This day was a major milestone for me! In the evening I embarked on my first run after 8 days of no activity. Lauren and I ran together. I still felt rough. The anti-biotics were messing with my gut and the cough persisted, but it was nice to move again. 8 days is the longest I have gone without running in years.

After another relaxing day we embarked on a big day of activities again. This time heading north to Mossman Gorge where we saw wild pigs, Port Douglas where we ate good food, then to Hartleys Crocodile Park. Hartleys was the best part of the day for me. The crocodiles were awesome to see but it was feeding a Cassowary that was my highlight.

I have an affinity for flightless birds for some reason. A few years ago I seriously looked into what was required for me to get a pet Emu. Thankfully I never went ahead with that idea because it would be an annoying pet. Last time we visited Cairns we saw a Cassowary in the wild and they are awesome birds!

When we got the opportunity to feed them we were told to hold out food and if it doesn’t take it then move on and let someone else try. Big Bird, the large female we were feeding wasn’t accepting food from anyone. Then I went up and grabbed a piece of tomato. I had seen the keeper feed her tomato so I knew she liked it. I offered the tomato to her and she hesitated a little then took it. After this she started eating from other people.

I was initially apprehensive because feeding emus is intense, they peck ferociously. But the Cassowary was different. It was a polite bird, it would slowly reach out and grab the fruit then swallow it whole. Not what I expected from a bird with such a fierce reputation. I even went back to try again and we filmed it, this time Big Bird was more fussy and spat it out.

Race Withdrawal and Reef Day

As the days dragged on so did my apprehension about running a 60km ultra. I had returned to running and each run I went on I felt stronger but my cough persisted and I wasn’t feeling anywhere near 100%. It took a few days to convince myself but I eventually decided that running the race was a bad idea and might set me back to square one.

On Friday morning I emailed the race director to withdraw and made a claim with the race entry insurance I wisely purchased. It was such a large weight off my shoulders knowing that I no longer had a race to stress about. We booked in an outer reef trip for the Saturday. Now I could relax and enjoy the reef trip without thinking about having to get up early the next day to run 60km in the heat.

We watched the weather all week and chose the least windy day we could find to head to the outer reef. My sister had never done an outer reef trip so her and Jake were coming along too. We were grateful for their company and the ‘locals discount’ they were able to provide.

All of us were slightly worried about getting sea sick on the journey out. But with the help of some Travacalm and a seat with the wind in our hair we had a great journey out to the reef with a little stop to admire the migrating humpback whales.

Lauren and I were both dead set on seeing sea turtles. At each of the locations I spent as much time snorkelling as I could in the hope of spotting a turt. It was so much fun diving around amongst the coral and the abundance of random beautiful fish. Sadly we didn’t get to see any turtles, I guess this means we will need to come back and try again.

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I decided to head out for a long run on the Sunday in place of my missed race. I mapped a route looking for what trails I could find in the vicinity of my sisters place. After too much street running I got onto the best trail I’d found all trip, the green arrow track. It was so nice with great views. I really enjoyed the run and faired well in the heat. Maybe I gained some heat acclimation from the week spent in the heat. I finished strong and fast along the esplanade in the heat of the day and couldn’t help but wonder how I would have performed in the race.

We finished our trip with a relaxed barbeque by the pool before flying out early Monday morning.

🏠Return and Relapse

The trip home went smoothly with planes taking off on time and somehow landing early. On the flight from Cairns to Sydney there was a person sitting diagonally behind me constantly sniffling and sneezing. I got paranoid and couldn’t escape his sneeze radius. Lauren had a mask, I didn’t. Eventually we landed and I was able to escape from the virulent creature.

We had a long layover in Sydney which was spent having lunch with Lauren’s parents who generously picked us up from the airport and took us out for lunch.

After returning home it was back to work and the grind of training. I got one good day in. Running around the streets and to the gym felt amazing. While running I kept thinking to myself:

“I’m back, I’m finally back!”

The next morning I woke with a blocked nose and knew that my aeroplane nemesis had infected me. This is the third virus in a row and the fifth week of viral illness. I am somewhat resigned to my fate and just hoping for a quicker recovery this time around.

🧪Experiments

Homemade Gels

With less running I am granted more time to think about my homemade gel recipes. So far I have tried two batches. The first was too sweet and thick. I followed this recipe from reddit and these were the ratios I used:

For the second batch I made the following changes

• Altered the ratio of glucose to fructose back to 2:1 to reduce the sweetness.
• Reduced the amount of pectin and removed the sodium alginate to make it less thick
• Added citric acid to flavour it and temper the sweetness

The outcome of my second batch was it was too liquidy and too strongly lemon flavoured. So I am back to the drawing board. I am hoping to dial in a recipe that works for the long haul so I can train with it in the lead up to the GPT100. Once I get it worked out there will be a full blog post about it.

Protein Milk

I had another brainwave whilst visiting my sister in Cairns. She works as a dietician and was saying that she often recommends powdered milk to people as a cheap source of protein, supposedly it’s cheaper than most protein supplements.

This got me thinking 🤔

I have always loved a choccy milk as a post run recovery drink. There is an advent of high protein choccy milks coming onto the market. I particularly love the Rokeby Farms Durch Chocolate. The problem is that they are fairly pricey.

So I am going to try to make my own version using milk, milk powder and chocolate flavouring and see how it comes out in taste and cost. I will report back on my findings.

🗓️Training or Lack Thereof

At the moment I’ve stopped even planning my training. It’s too frustrating making plans that keep falling through. I have a rough idea of the maximum volume I want to build up to before the 100 miler. But I need to wait and see how my recovery goes and be smart with my return to loading given my inconsistency lately. Fingers crossed I finally recover next week and I can get back to the usual programming.

Here’s a pictorial view of my fall from grace. I hit rock bottom there for a bit, onwards and upwards is the only way to go from here. Hopefully my next update post is more optimistic 🤞

🔭Reflections and Looking Ahead

I have been getting frustrated with my health troubles and at times impatient which is probably a large reason why I am still sick. The silver lining of this challenging period is that the break from running has built up so much motivation to train. The time off might work in my favour and allow me to enjoy the big training block that is incoming.

My focus is now entirely on recovery and building a solid foundation before I attempt to tackle the GPT100. The next few weeks will be dedicated to listening to my body, gradually increasing my volume, and hopefully, finally putting this sickness behind me. The countdown is on, and I’m ready to finally start my build for the big race.