My running miracle...

Obviously my intention of doing a daily blog posting has had the same result as most of my New Years' resolutions: good intentions with lousy follow through...

Marathon #2 - Zion's Bank Odgen Marathon - I had pneumonia and qualified for the Boston Marathon with a time of 3 hours 11 minutes. My previous personal best had been 3 hours 45 minutes.

How did I shave off 30 minutes? While having pneumonia??? Its easy, I had a ringer. Here's the story...

After the Salt Lake City Marathon, I had three weeks to train. This translates to 1 week of easy training letting my muscles recover. The next week involved intensity increasing runs peaking at day 14. The final week involved tapering and carbo loading so by day 21 I would be ready for the full 26.2 miles.

Week 1 & 2 went better than expected. I peaked at just the right time on day 14 with a 20 mile run and felt great afterward. The following day I woke up with a slightly sore throat. This is not that uncommon after a long run. Because of my intense training, I have come to expect that my immune system takes a beating and is handicapped after especially long runs. This was no problem, I did a low intensity 5 miler on day 15. However, I nearly blacked out after I got off the treadmill. Not to worry though, it was the beginning of week 3 and it was a taper and carb loading week. There was plenty of time to get my body sufficient rest and nutrition before the coming race. I was getting excited.

Unfortunately, days 16-18 showed no signs of me recovering. I have run a marathon sick before but this time my body just didn't feel right. Regardless, I was going to run this race even if it killed me. By the time day 19 rolled around and I decided to go to the doctor to get on antibiotic, it was too late. The flu test-negative, the strep test-negative, the chest x-ray was another story. To quote the radiologist upon first glance at the film "OH MY GOD" . And there is was, the biggest cloudiest xray the radiologist had ever seen. The race could actually kill me. I had pneumonia. Additional tests showed that my oxygen intake was at 70 percent. Had I not been in such good shape I would have been hospitalized for several days. Fortunately, the doctors let me go home with several antibiotics, steriods and a massive inhaler.

Dammit, Dammit, Dammit...despite feeling like crap, I felt like a kid who was at the ticket line at Disneyland and told that he is too short to ride any of the rides. I had done so much and prepared so much to be at this point at this time, to have it all go down the toilet....

Or so I thought...

I have an aquantaince, Steve, who I occasionally work with. He runs, but hasn't really been training this season and was trying to get into the Ogden Marathon for some time. Unfortunately for him, it sold out in 2 days and he didn't get his registration in on time. Every time I talked with him, he mumbled about how unfair the registration process was and that he probably wouldn't be running any races this season...blah, blah, blah...

On my way home from the doctors, I happen to see Steve hanging out in front of his job and I pulled over and told him my sad story. Then I did something nice, I asked Steve if he wanted to run for me. I handed him my ID and told him that he could even have the race swag and not worry about the registration fees since I would have lost them anyhow.

Steve prepared me that he handn't trained this season (in fact I thought I saw him smoking a cigarette a few days before). It didn't really matter, I would rather have someone use my registration than the opportunity go to waste. I wished him luck then went home and pouted for the rest of the day.

The day of the race came and I spent it in bed not giving another thought about how I missed out. I was so sick, I was praying for death.

Sunday started my slow recovery. I woke up and got online to find out how Steve did in the race. I scrolled the names from the bottom and didn't see my name, so I figured that Steve wasn't able to run. I did only give him a days notice. As I scrolled up to see the winning time, there it was, 10th from the top in my age division: Thomas Sweigart 3:11:48. I QAULIFIED FOR THE BOSTON MARATHON.

Holy crap...I couldn't believe it. Steve had managed to run his best race under my name. He was only 3 minutes off my age groups winning time.

The following day I saw Steve and he thanked me for allowing him to run and that it reinvigorated his passion for running. I joked that he qaulified me for Boston and he stated that was his goal as a thank you for my generosity.

In conlclusion, unless you read this blog, I will insist that I qualified myself. So feel free to call me out if I mention it and you happen to know the truth. Of the few people I have told, I get asked whether or not I will enter Boston in 2010. The simple answer: ABSO-FRICKIN-LUTELY!!! I already have the plane ticket!!!