“I have great news,” I tell my family. “It’s not going to sound like great news at first, but it really, really is.”  Pregnant pause.

“I have bronchitis.”

Another pregnant pause.

Then they asked what you may be asking yourself: “What could possibly be great about bronchitis?"

What’s great about bronchitis is this: it’s an actual diagnosis. It's treatable, and it explains why I’ve been so slow on the trail, so tired and short of breath, so unmotivated. My weekly mileage over the last two weeks has been cut in half.

One of my teammates, Mel, wrote a few weeks ago about the results of overtraining. We exchanged a couple of private emails about when was the best time to rest, and before I even contemplated when I might rest, I got sick, which forced  me to rest.  That’s the thing about time off – if you don’t take it, as Mel expertly warned, it WILL catch up with you.

I know as well as any runner the beauty of pushing through. Sometimes that nagging pull in a hamstring or tendon goes away after five or six minutes on the trail, as if all you needed was to get the blood rushing around.  Sometimes my most productive work happens after my second wind.

But there’s a problem with pushing through too: if I had gone to the doctor at the first sign of symptoms, I’d have spared myself a lot of slow miles, a lot of self-induced guilt about my energy level, and a lot of worry about my upcoming race.

Sometimes, I trick myself into believing I have a superior command of my body’s signals – I think I know when to push, and when to ease up. But it’s a trick: when it comes to “pushing through,” it turns out that not only am I no better, no more in tune than most, but I may actually be worse.

I like to believe that I’m a fast learner – that I’ll take this lesson and apply it. In reality, I know that I am messy, and human, and I will forget.  For those of you I’m fortunate enough to play, work, or share friendship with, I invite gentle challenges when you see me dragging tail on the trail or in a meeting.

And, maybe with the help of the amazing people in my life, I’ll never utter these words again: “Hooray, bronchitis!”