So I haven't put anything on here in a while, but it has been an eventful month. I finished off my fall racing cycle with a 5 mile race in West Chester (Brian's Run). First, I'll talk about this race and then I'll talk about the events leading up to my present situation of being unable to do any real training.
Brian's run was another opportunity to race my least favorite distance and make some money. There were two good Kenyans and Griff Graves, fresh off getting 55th (I think) at NCAA XC for Syracuse jumped in. I had not been feeling great and he was running on tired legs, having finished up the NCAA season the weekend before and run the DE XC open at Brandywine the day before. the kenyans broke away early and ran together while Griff and I whined about African dominance for the first two miles. This race was very hilly for a road race, and Griff put me away mid-race on the uphills. I caught him with a strong last mile and ended up being him by a decent amount, getting 3rd overall. After the race I took a week off of running, with plans to take a fairly easy week of getting back into it and then jumping back into serious training.
After taking the week off, I ran about 60 miles and did not feel especially good. I chalked it up to being tired from work, or just wear and tear. However, after having to cut my run short on Sunday (planned 12, struggled through 9), I knew something was not right with my body. I got a blood test done the next day and it showed a high level of thyroid hormone (T4, for those interested). This meant that I was hyperthyroid and my body was effectively overclocked. I got a thyroid scan this week (12/23 - 24) and that showed that my thyroid wasn't taking up any iodine to produce more hormone.
Basically what happened was that some stimulus (likely a virus or bacteria) made my thyroid freak out and dump all of its hormone into my bloodstream relatively quickly. These hormones are responsible for essentially every metabolic function, from body temperature to heart rate to digestive processes. Once the thyroid exhausted its hormone from puking it into my body, it was all dried up, swinging the metaphorical pendulum in the other direction. So I started out with too much hormone, now I have too little, and it will take a couple months for my thyroid to correct itself and return to equilibrium.
Bottom line: there is no cure for this except to wait for my body to figure itself out and get itself back to normal. 2-6 months (broad range, I know) is the typical recovery time, but further complicating that guess is that it's hard to pinpoint when it started. So hopefully I'm all back to normal in two months, but until then I am writing off any hope of racing this winter or spring and am just focusing on getting back to normal health before I start thinking about running goals.
