... and then my body said "Hell No"

I guess it was unreasonable of me to ask my body to do the daily 9-5 grind, support the lifestyle of a lush by night, and then wake up bright and early for 4.5 to 6-mile runs for weeks on end. It was a pretty good sport for most of April ... but last night it decided that enough is enough. So now, less than two days before I'm supposed to run my first 10K, I'm sick! Last night and most of this morning, my throat was just burning. I wish I could've stayed in bed but I'm in the middle of doing a video-editing course that my office paid an arm and a leg for so I couldn't play hooky. Since the training center is near Chinatown, though, during lunch I made a beeline for Wing Wong on Lafayette Street, which serves my favorite sick-day comfort food: chicken congee with plenty of ginger. So good ...

Afterwards, I went to Kam Man on Canal Street to get a bottle of this:

It's funny, I always tell people that I have very little Chinese blood (which is true), but I have so many habits that out the Chinese in me. When I'm sick, I like to eat chicken congee and swig Pei Pa Koa, this Chinese herbal remedy that consists of Elm Bark, sucrose syrup, and a honey base of herbal extracts. Filipino friends have been telling me all night though to steer clear of it because apparently, Pei Pa Koa candies were recalled back in 2006 for containing formaldehyde! I did a Google Search though and it turns out that it's back in the market without traces of formaldehyde, and in any case, it was the candy made by another manufacturer and not this syrup that was recalled so I'm still swigging ... I just feel so much better after having it ...

If I'm rambling, I apologize and blame it fully on the "herbal remedy."  I'm gonna go back to sleep now and hopefully I'll wake up feeling a tad better tomorrow. I really don't want to skip my first race. I've been researching on running with a cold and according to this article on Runner's World, it's okay to run if your symptoms are above the chest (sniffles, sneezing) but you should lay off it it's below the chest (chest cold, body ache, bronchial infection). So far, I seem to be in the clear. *fingers crossed*