So that's why they say not to work out with a chest cold

Unfortunately, as a birthday gift this year it seems I received a pretty bad chest cold. I woke up on Thursday morning feeling super congested. Also, when I coughed it was really painful. So, I decided to skip working out on Thursday (which was much needed...my last day off was 10 days before that) and resume with a terrier hill workout on Friday.

No such luck! After tossing and turning all night Thursday because of my coughing, I woke up at 5:30am, saw that it was about 16 degrees and decided a hard workout in the cold was the last thing I needed to recover from my cold. Instead, I got up at 8:00am and headed to the gym with big plans of doing a tempo run on the treadmill.

I started by warming up for .5 miles at between a 9-10 min pace. My chest hurt a little bit, but it wasn't completely unbearable so I started to increase the speed towards an 8 min/mile. That's when my body fought back. I had almost stabbing pains in my chest after less than a .25 mile at an 8:00 min/mile. I took a quick walk break and thought, hmm perhaps I just did too much too fast and could see how I did at an 8:30 pace. FAIL! More chest pain. At this point, I knew I needed to at least get some cardio in, so I moved over to a spin bike.

I did 23 minutes on the spin bike. I didn't go particularly fast and only covered about 8 miles. It hurt even when I stood on the spin bike and tried to increase the resistance or my cadence too much. For good measure (and b/c I'll be doing bricks as soon as next week---no reason not to practice), I jumped back on the treadmill for another mile. This time I took it nice and easy. 9:30 pace the whole way.

Despite not doing exactly what I intended at the gym this morning, I felt pretty good about my workout. Considering that a lot of people would have used my cold as an excellent reason not to work out (which maybe I should have, according to most websites google directed me to) the fact that I got in 40 minutes of cardio is more than enough for me.

Total Workout Today:

Running 17 minutes
Spin 23 minutes