Sick Day

I woke up sick this morning. Yesterday, I was sure I was suffering from severe allergies, but felt relatively fine. I went to bed early in preparation for swimming today, but when my alarm went off this morning, I knew something wasn't right before I even tried to get out of bed. My seemingly harmless allergies had turned into a terrible cold. Not only was my head congested, but I felt like someone spent the night sitting on my chest, making it difficult to take a full breath. Needless to say, I turned off the alarm, let go of any thoughts of swimming today, and went back to sleep.

This is been a terribly disappointing week for training. I got off to a great start on Monday with a good race, but then had two consecutive days off due to being tired from travel and work commitments. I got back into the swing of things on Thursday with a good swim, but had to skip the run on Thursday night, then had more work conflicts on Friday that forced another day off. And now I'm sick.

But unfortunately, this is what training is about. There is the less fun side of things, the inevitable life or health conflicts that get in the way and so quickly derail the momentum you've built up. Unless you have the luxury of not having to work and being able to train full time, there will always be days where you try to strike a balance and may not succeed. And there is always the risk of illness or injury, particularly during peak training periods when your body is being pushed to the limit. My greatest fear every year before the marathon is that I will have a morning like today on the day of the race or the few days prior, where I wake up sick and know that just getting up will be a challenge and attempting 26.2 miles might be impossible. I've luckily never been sick on race day and I'm hoping today's minor setback will guarantee immunity for the triathlon. At least I'm likely not to catch another cold.

I'm resting today, drinking gallons of water and spending some down time with friends. I will go to bed as early as possible and I hope that when I wake up tomorrow, I'll be feeling good enough to join my weekly JackRabbit group training ride. My plan was to do the ride, then extend it by riding to Nyack and back. I'd like to stick with this plan, so here's hoping.