Last Sunday, I ran my first “race” since the NYC Marathon. And I say “race” in quotes because, let’s be honest, I was running for completion, not speed. I do most things at this stage for completion, not speed. This was a half marathon at West Point, chosen largely because it was one of the only races happening in early March and I needed something—anything—to force me to run through the winter.

Which, in theory, was a great idea. But despite signing up to motivate myself, I still didn’t actually run that much through the winter. Some reasons were legitimate. Some were less so. Either way, race day arrived, and the hills were just ridiculous. Gorgeous course, great company—my friend had trained properly, a minor detail—but I got absolutely wrecked. And because my friend is a good person, she refused to run ahead, which just meant I got to feel both physically destroyed and guilty about holding her back.

And then I got sick. Like, really sick. The kind of sick where you attempt to work for an hour, then collapse into another nap. The kind where you stare at your laptop like it personally offended you. The kind where your body feels like a foreign, malfunctioning machine.

Which, of course, feels a lot like being hungover.

Not exactly the same, but close enough: foggy-headed, exhausted, irritable, deeply unmotivated, like your own body is actively working against you. And I’ll be honest—it feels a little unfair. Like, I quit drinking, I did the work, I opted out of feeling like garbage in the mornings… and somehow, here I am, feeling like garbage anyway?

But of course, this will pass. Unlike a hangover, this isn’t self-inflicted. Unlike a hangover, I don’t have to mentally scroll through the night before wondering whether I “seemed drunk,” or pretend to remember a conversation with my husband from the night before, or deal with the shame of breaking a promise to myself AGAIN.  Unlike a hangover, I can just… rest. Let my body recover, instead of punishing it more. And that’s the thing about not drinking—there’s no guarantee you’re going to feel aces every day. But when you do feel bad, you know you’re not the one who did it to yourself.

Actually, maybe I did do this to myself, in the sense that the race just was too much of an hit on my immunity given my lack of training.  But that’s ok. I was TRYING to do something good for myself, and there weren’t a lot of middle-aged women out there running with the cadets. That’s still a win.