Hit and Linger

I sensed it coming before it hit me.
 
I was in my garage, grinding away on the trainer doing a set of "Over/Unders", when suddenly my legs fell off. I couldn't turn the pedals anymore. The harder I tried, the higher my heart rate up, but my power level kept sliding down. I backed off, tried to recover, but it was no use. I was done and I knew something was wrong.
 
The first thing I noticed was that my nose was running. My nose always runs when I'm on the trainer, which explains the jumbo box o' tissues on the bike repair stand, but my nose kept running hours after I finished and would not stop. After a couple days of wearing off all of my nose skin trying to stem the constant flow, I finally gave in to Sudafed so I could get some sleep. I hate taking drugs, because they usually leave me like one of the title characters from The Walking Dead, but I was tired of waking up constantly with a runny nose. Four hours after taking the little red pills, I was awake feeling the effects of severe dehydration. At least my nose wasn't running.
 
For the rest of the week, I was fighting the various stages of the cold as it worked its way through my body. One day I would be coughing, the next I would ache all over. I hadn't had a serious cold in almost two years, and I was getting hit hard. The workouts suffered all week, as I skipped intervals or cut sessions short when I couldn't continue. I backed off when I felt rough, although I probably extended the cold by a couple days by pushing it here or there. I tend to do things like that.
 
Now I think it's behind me for the most part, so I'm trying to crawl out from the effects and get back on track. The one thing that was nice about the experience is that I wasn't as hungry as usual, which helped kick-start my New Year's diet. My goal is to no longer be overweight (according to the BMI scale) by race season, which is a condition I haven't seen since 1997.
 
Maybe I should get sick again...

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