I went from 45-50 mile weeks to like 29. I've been dying all week about how how far I came last week finishing with an 18 miler, feeling so strong to lying flat on my back for 3 days. I'm much better, but still wondered how to take today. I took a dose of dayquil, and two hits off my inhaler before I met Catherine at 7:30. It was actually really warm and I ended up part of the run in a sleeveless base tank. We picked a route that I could drop out by my house around mile 6 if I needed to. While I was running my phone (which I always turn to vibrate or off while I'm busy) kept vibrating the whole time I was running. Down around mile 4, we were met by a very scary, injured, abandoned dog right in the middle of the trail. We couldn't go around it because there was steep marsh on one side of the trail, and fence on the other. The dog hunched down and looked straight at us with his ears flat to his head, we couldn't tell if he was scared or rabid. It was so "To Kill A Mockingbird" with the rabid dog wandering down the street before the big trial. It had an ominous foreshadowing feeling about it. We eventually picked up rocks and sticks and went the marsh route while the dog kept his eyes glued to us in his lowered perch in the middle of the road. I could not get a deep breath during the run, but it was not as cold on my lungs as I was afraid of, and somehow the running itself wasn't too shabby (9:21 for the first 8 miles. 9:40s for the rest). By 12 and 13 Catherine was babysitting me. She recounted the number of times on long runs I'd kept her courage up and kept her going (good story Catherine, but whatever, it worked). I'm glad I had her to help me get it done. It's been hard to know how much cardio fitness (I've worked so hard to build in the past 3 weeks) has been lost, how much muscle strength due to flabby running. But what else can you do when you're sick? It makes your body more run down, more weak to stress it while it's busy killing virus & bacteria. At least that's my experience (the sicknesses stick around longer under duress). The whole run was a little rough and all I could think about was poor me. But once I got home I saw I had 6 messages on my phone in under 2 hours. An 8.8 earthquake hit Chile in the very region where my in laws live & all my husband's family lives. No phone lines, no cel lines, no online contact because the electricity/gas/major highways were closed. My sweet little mother in law lost her first son due to the effects the 8.5 near Valdivia in 1960 had on her health. The subsequent conditions, and Tsnumani ruined the entire region. Those memories are never far from her mind. She was 6 months pregnant with her first son when it hit, she was alone and the noise so defening that she (being deeply religious) believed it was the second coming. She ran outside and saw a neighbor's cow struggle as it fell sideways and was caught in a chasm in earth, while telephone poles popped out of the ground. There was no food or water from the outside regions for 3 weeks, no relief. My father in law and his friends used scuba gear to recover sacs of flour & provisions off sunken vessles in the harbor. My husband's oldest brother was born with sever cerebral palsy due to the malnutrition and oxygen deprevation because of the nervous state of my young mother in law (she had hyperventalation & fainting spells every time she heard loud noises for the remainder of the pregnancy). We named our son after her lost son, I know the effects of an 8.8 seventy miles from her house has her struggleing for composure. She's so tiny. But they are deeply evangelical and we know their faith will be of comfort to them. We've heard now from some relatives that have been in contact and they have mild damage to the house, but still no electricity, water, phones. Now will come the Tsnumanis, aftershocks, food & medical supply shortages. I'm sure they will prevail, but we have friends and family from Valparaiso to Punta Arenas--all of whom have been affected, some having lost their homes to structure damage. Such a weird day. I'm still coughing and I'm exhausted from the morning's effort, and now I'll spend the day trying to contact my sweet mother in law. | 