Chicken Pox: 2, Dan: 0

It's been more than six weeks, including two false starts, and only now am I finally starting to get my strength back since contracting adult-onset chicken pox back in February.

The weirdest thing about this virus is how it gives you the illusion of recovering your energy one day, and then it pitilessly crushes that illusion the next day. An example from two weeks ago: After two consecutive days of successfully running one mile, I was just starting to think I'm getting enough strength back to start running a little bit. I planned a three mile run for that Monday morning.

Those of you who know me know that normally three miles is nothing for me. But I'd been pretty sick, so the fact that I managed it with a couple of walking breaks was fine with me. A decent show.

Sure enough, as soon as I got back home, I started to feel so badly that I ended up spending the rest of the day in bed.

This virus is sneaky; it let me do the run and even get a little bit of confidence before it broke me.

Then, last week, an even worse head-fake: I had been running 2-3 miles a day for four or five days in a row, and was really getting excited about my improvement, so I thought I'd push things a little more and try a longer run of six miles.

And after the run was over, I felt great. I was so psyched I even taunted the chicken pox virus on Facebook.

What a fool.

Two days later, I came down with the flu and bronchitis and I was on my back again, this time for four days.

I've now recovered from that latest setback and I'm back to square one fitness-wise. So today, I'm going to dare to do a 1 mile run.

#%&*$"#%* pox.