Sore from a Dream?

This is so strange. So Thursday night I had some trouble sleeping. I woke up in the middle of the night and had two glasses of water, an ibuprofen and went to the bathroom. During the night I dreamt about running the Drake Relays Half Marathon, which I am actually running in 22 hours. Basically in the dream it was after the fact and I had a good race but I ran so hard I blacked out and couldn't remember the last half. So I was scanning through results and when I got up to 7th place I stopped reading because I didn't believe I could finish any higher. But my friend who also ran it told me to keep looking. I ran 1:10:24 for 4th place and he was 1:10:54 for fifth, which would be a massive PR for him by the way. After blacking out the last part of the race I had been taken to the hospital. I was so excited I had pushed myself so hard and done that well in the race.

Here is the problem. I woke up Friday with physically sore muscles and an upset stomach. Like I raced a half marathon the day before. I felt progressively worse during the day and after getting home after work I took a 2.5 hour nap. So I was thinking what made today different than other days? I did race a 10k last weekend and do a 3k tempo Wednesday. But I expect to be recovered from the 10k and not very sore at all from the 3k tempo. Given my psychosomatic incident and reading a few similar other reports on the Internet it's probably not that I am sick. It's that I thrashed around all night because my mind ran the race three days early.

I'm exhausted. I even have a bit of an upset stomach. Something that also happens after some longer harder runs.

How strange is that? Running myself into a blackout is looked upon as a sign of strength? Not to mention all of this happens in a dream.

Now it is Saturday morning and I feel much better. I am in great shape and will likely have a great race tomorrow. Since I have already mentioned a few things, let me tell you about the race. The Drake Relays Half Marathon and 10k start together, so there will probably be a lot of people that go out fast, that I am not competing directly against. Plus, it is a downhill start. I could realistically split a couple sub 5 minute miles at the beginning and not go out too fast. I've never done that in a half marathon. I've run sub 5 miles in 5ks and 10ks, nothing longer. Secondly, there is quite a bit of prize money. 7th place in the half gets $1000! Generally speaking that kind of prize money will probably get a 1:05-1:08 performance. The winner gets $12,000 which is in the territory of 1:02-1:03 kind of quality. I'm in the race because it is perfect for me to PR. I'm not going to win. I'm just not in that kind of shape. But there will certainly be at least a couple people ahead of me to pull me along to a PR, and if things go well some prize money. However, given the amount of prize money, and the 10k and half people start together, I could be in 50th place at two miles at 10:20 with women ahead of me. So... if we knew what was going to happen we would not run the race. It is going to be a good day!