Frozen

I could count with the fingers of just one hand the number of times in a year that I get sick. Today is one of them. As I do all other days I got up at 0540 h, took a minute shower and jumped into my uniform and went to breakfast. But today, unlike other days we had to get suited up for squadron photos up Mt. Ainslie (emphasis on Mt), that means elevation, that means strong winds, that means a good view, that means ass-freezing cold. It was, oh about 1 degree? Felt more like -10 to me. My eyes were watering as I would look stupid closing my eyes for a photo shoot. So, I opened and half smiled while feeling my eyeballs freeze in their sockets. I could barely move my fingers, my face felt like cardboard. My feet... don't even get me started with my feet. They felt dipped in iced water. All in all it wasn't the best photo shoot. By then I felt the beginnings of a cold... aching head, cloggy nose. Thank God for the warm buses that brought us back to the academy. But it doesn't end there. We had to do our physical fitness test (not the highlight of my day) which I passed, miraculously. I was running, sucking in gulps of iced air, feeling the pain but not the good warm burn that normally goes with it. I literally could not feel my legs... and that's not because of the run... I just found that I wasn't sweating at all. I felt like I was wading through icy water. But with a little help from my friends and the Big Guy I did reach that finish line... grudgingly. When I stopped running I just could not breathe, feeling my lungs just staying contracted, feeling all that trapped heat just surging up to my head. I thought this couldn't be good. And it wasn't. Got back to the blocks and sneezed probably 10 times in a span of what? 5 seconds? Hey, that's a record if anything. I'm having a massive headache and a runny nose. The best part is that the day isn't over yet. :(