Perceptions are the truth

There are about 5 million articles warning athletes never ever to donate blood at least 3 weeks before a major event...

and i read none of it until now.

I timed the donation to be about a week before sunday's marathon because i wanted to force myself to rest my tired legs. In the world of sports, this is called tapering in which the marathon training takes a breather about 2-3 weeks prior to the event to allow the body's muscle to recover from all the months exertion.

Smart arse me has compressed the taper period to about 10 days prior to the event because i didnt even have enough time to exert the body enough im seriously much better than those lousy runners who is out to run another marathon...

In the past, i had one bad experience while donating blood and training for marathon before. I tried to run about a day after a donation early in marathon training season and almost fainted while coming home from a 4km run. From then on, i knew my body wasnt ready for exertion within 24 hours of donation...

The saving grace was that i did resume my 4km training runs about 3 days after the donation that year and felt fine.

So with that experience in mind, i was hoping that the week leading up to marathon would be n excellent opportunity to recuperate and save a life in the process. That feels so stupid now.

I ran 2km yesterday...and felt like a dog at the end of it. All those training down the drain... maybe i should just bring my camera on sunday and forget about running

Regards
Dont feel so smart now.

UPdate

The most encouraging post i read thus far tells me that perhaps its all in the mind. If donating blood reduces performance, then ladies having that time of the month would never be ready for long dist running.

Its all in the mind. Its all in the mind! Waaaooot...