Sometimes the cold catches you

I caught a cold. It's been chasing me for a while and it looked like I beat it until Sunday morning when I woke up and I felt like crap.

I knew it was coming and took four days off last week. I just didn't have the energy to go out and run. I thought that if I took a few days off then I'd be fine. But Sunday morning the stars just weren't aligned for the Old Magoun Saloon race.

First up - picking up Gazelle Boy at his father's house. Good thing I called ahead because no one was up in spite of hammering out specific times when he picked up the boys Friday afternoon. The reason for the call ahead of time - because I knew that they'd still be asleep in spite of making definitive plans.

We were almost to the race when I noticed the heat had stopped working in the van. About two blocks away, the van began to smell funny and the "check gauges" light came on as the temperature gauge rose.

Not good at all.

Then, when we lined up, I started up my Nike+ only it had a hard time finding the sensor and kept turning itself off. While I started off well keeping up with the pack, about a mile in my lungs just said, "What are you doing?" and seized up. It wasn't an asthma seize, more like a traffic stopping protest march to remind me who was in control.

Yes folks, I was tired, cranky and wasn't real fond of the government at that point.

Fortunately one of the race volunteers was right there and gave me a ride to within a couple of blocks of the start/end before going on to his next traffic direction post. I could have walked the race or even have walked back - but this just made life nicer.

Gazelle Boy came into a neck and neck race at the end, with the other guy pulling a shoulder ahead of him for the 12th & 13th spots. We went inside, had some eggs and juice and decided to see if the van could make it the 20 minute drive home.

Good thing I have AAA.

We made it to within a couple of miles of home when it was clear the van was toast. The radiator was leaking - it still had water/fluid in it, which is good, but it was clear there was a leak somewhere in the system. I called Mr. Bear who met up with us and sat there until the truck showed and then followed us to the mechanic.

By then I was toast. I got in my jammies and curled up on the couch to read the papers and have been down ever since sucking on zinc lozengers and drinking water like a camel at a desert oasis.

Today I do need to get myself in motion whether I want to or not. I'm feeling far better than I did yesterday but I'm sad that I don't have the energy to run or do yoga or anything.

Of course, for some reason, blogger flagged me as a "spam blog." WTF???? I originally thought the email they sent me was some sort of phishing expedition - you know like the fake AOL and Ebay messages that appear in my mailbox on a daily basis. But in logging on this morning, I found out it was a real message and now have to go through the "hey folks, really, I'm not a spam blog" process. So who knows when this will finally go up at the site.

Just another reason to nag Mr. Bear to put blogging software up on our server.

In the meantime - Happy Christmahannukwanzica to everyone.