day?

Day 2.5 was actually Thursday.
This entry is actually for Friday: I didn't exercise at all. I'm trying to shake a small but stubborn cold. There are a few factors in play:

I'm still sleep-deprived, and I'm in holiday mode which delays bedtime. However, unless really really sick (as in fever and delirium sick), I cannot sleep in. Ever. I can take short naps, but it's very hard for me to sleep much past 9 even if I stay up past 5 or so.

I'm doing this herbal detox cleanse which presumably has stirred things up a bit...there was a warning that symptoms might crop up in the first few days.

The main issue, which has taken me a week to realize, is that I'm staying cold after running. Getting cold is normal after winter runs because under-circulated and chilled blood returns to the core once exercise and exposure to cold external temperatures is over. It's a less drastic effect now that I don't underdress for winter runs anymore; I used to not wear any sort of windbreaker until -20 C or so (really!) and the blood in my arms would get refrigerated, which refrigerated everything else once it fully returned to circulation. Now that I wear a windbreaker, extremities stay warmer, but I still get chilled after runs.

Getting cold is not the issue though: staying cold is. My old house was generally frigid but the hot water heater was jacked up to near-boiling. Come to think of it, I was getting a daily mini-spa treatment during the winter. We're now staying at my parents' house which is a much warmer house in general, but their hot water heater is set at a lower temp. I don't touch add cold water at all while showering and it's still not warm enough; I feel cold for hours afterward.

Now, yes, cold doesn't cause colds, viruses do, but getting cold makes it more likely to "catch" a cold, and here's why (explanation honed by a few arguments with people who, in rejecting simplistic folk wisdom, seized simplistic biology instead): the immune system, particularly all those killer T cells and macrophages that attack and ingest intruders, operate more effectively at warmer temps (to a certain degree, of course!). At normal body temps in normal people, they usually keep things down to a dull roar, a bacterium here and there wanders in and blips around for a bit before getting chomped, kind of like a couple of kids from down the street running through the house a few times and then out the door, or that lonely neighbour bringing over some mis-delivered mail and hanging around for a few extra minutes, or a meter reader showing up, no big deal. After several minutes, you get them out of the house. Sometimes more people show up and it starts to get crowded, maybe the neighbours start knocking, and inflammation and increased mucus production do the job. When the party gets a bit more out of hand, the macrophages and other cells ring up the hypothalamus, essentially, The Heat, and the resulting fever helps kicks things into a higher gear. Exercise is pretty much an artificial fever and seems to stifle little colds as well. However, if body temps drop too much, defences get sluggish and pathogens get a head start. The longer it takes to raise body temps to normal or above, the more pathogens there are to gobble up. The party that was kind of noisy at 11:01 pm is torching cars and sofas at 3 am. I have a slightly lower body temp than normal which probably doesn't help either.

Solution: A: look at the bodyrock routines BEFORE runs so that I keep active and revved up right until the shower. Usually I run, then check the website for the daily workout and video (and start to get chilled), then do the workout. B: after the shower, curl up under a blanket or something. This is going to be an incredibly difficult sacrifice but my health is worth it.

Hopefully I'll run and implement my strategies later today.