Day 94: Allergy Attack-ack-ack

As you may have gleaned by now, I'm a big fan of rewarding myself. I want the most possible reward for basically putting forth the least amount of effort. If there was a crowd of people congratulating me for crawling out of bed every morning, or perhaps breathing at a reasonably sturdy rate, I'd be all for it. To prove this point, I was so pleased with my performance on my 16 mile run, that I essentially rewarded myself with three days off from training - Mazel Tov to myself, I say! Yes, I realize that giving myself time off from my training schedule as a reward is like giving a man who has days to live a lottery ticket for a drawing that's three months away, but it worked on my psyche, and that's all that matters.  This, like the time I dyed my hair jet black and my decision to support Gwen Stefani as a solo artist, proved to be a terrible mistake. 


You see by Thursday, when I was ready to train again, my allergies has kicked into high gear for the season. For those of you who don't have any kind of allergy, well, you can bite me. Imagine the most annoying, irritating child you've ever encountered. Think Dennis the Menace mixed with that little girl from those old Pepsi commercials and remove any kind of ridalin from the situation. Now picture that child is running amok inside your face. That's sort of what allergies are, except not as pleasant.

Depending on what you are allergic and how severe they are, the way your allergies manifest themselves vary. I get the good ol' sneezing through several boxes of tissues per day, throat closing, eye numbing that makes death seem like a warm and inviting alternative.

I left work early on Thursday, or rather was asked to leave by several people, because I was disgusting to be around. At one point I needed to put two tissues up my nose to stop the constant oozing, and as few inhibitions as I have, that's something that is really meant only for the sanctity of your couch.


However, by the time I got home, I was feeling a little better and I decided to go for a run. I figured that it was only 40 minutes, so it shouldn't be so bad. I had also recently become obsessed with the notion that something was going to go horribly wrong the day of the marathon and I'd have to run through it. I suddenly found myself wanting to prepare for running in a perfect storm of allergies, diarrhea, alternating cold snaps and waves of intense heat. It would also be raining, the pavement on the city streets would be replaced by marshmallows and my high school girlfriend would be running besides me while having sex with her new husband.

Let's just say that things didn't go very well. My asthma, which had been at bay for a while at this point (and hadn't flared up at all during my training thus far) started to act up, possibly due to the fact that I was unable to breath through my nose and the air was so thick you could actually scoop it up, put it in a box and FedEx it to Mother Nature with a note that said: "Are you proud of yourself?"

I got through the 40 minutes, barely, but realized that if any of the disasters I was envisioning for the marathon, which would essentially be the sequel to that disaster-porn 2012, come to fruition, I'd be, well, fucked.



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