First off, I apologize about my hiatus from posting anything. I got sick, which is part of the reason I hadn't posted in a while and I've been incredible busy. My clients are always my top priority and they will always take precedence over this blog. Nonetheless, I am committed to this blog and will do my best to post regularly. On that note, here we go:
So a couple weeks ago I ended up getting quite sick. I was extremely congested, had a sore throat, and just felt awful. There has been a lot of this going around and no matter how well you treat your body (not that I'm saying I treat mine perfectly), people get sick from time to time. My thoughts and recommendations about training while sick are as follows: DON'T DO IT! I realize that most endurance athletes are extremely devoted to their training and will do anything to get their training in. I totally understand their devotion, but its just not the right thing to do. When you're sick, you're body is extremely busy trying to fight germs and cure the illness. It requires extra rest and allowing your immune system to fight off whatever you have going on. If you add training in there, it typically makes things much worse. How can you expect your body to recover when you're putting more stress on it by training and forcing it try to handle more than it already has going on? So be smart and listen to your body!
I was sick for a solid 3 days where I didn't train at all. This was extremely difficult for me! I really get upset about missing workouts and it was killing me. I missed a couple strength training sessions with my teammates and it was hard to think that they were busy training while I was laying in bed. But what did I do? I sucked it up and got as much rest as possible. I drank a lot of fluids and tried to give my body as much energy as I could get heal. As a result, I did miss about 3 straight days of training, but I know I would have missed a lot more and felt lousy a lot longer if I had tried to battle through.
The key to preventing illness or letting illness significantly affect your life is to try to catch it early. So what are you suppose to do the next time you wake up in the morning with a sore throat and that bad taste in your mouth and you're supposed to go train? Stay in bed! Give your body some extra time to heal and try to kill the germs right away. A lot of people will try to push through this and they wait until they feel terrible before they will stop training. In the long term, you're going to miss a lot more workouts by trying to push through a workout when its first coming on and it will allow the illness to get much worse. Take that day off and hopefully it will only affect your training for a day or two. If it takes longer, so be it, but I know your body and your training in the long haul will thank you for it.
Now, if you choose to ignore what I just stated and try to train through sickness, at least tone down the intensity! Some people like to "sweat it out" and this can work on occasion, but please at least lower the intensity of the workout. Do you have a speed workout on the plan? If you're going to do the workout, just do half to 3/4 of the recommended duration and bag the speed/high intensity parts of the workout. The same goes for when you're coming back from being sick. For my athletes, they should not be exceeding zone 2 during these type of workouts. This will allow you to get a sweat and get your body going, but not totally destroy yourself with a workout you're body can't handle at that time.
If you log your workouts and leave comments for your coach about how you're feeling and keep them up to date on what's going on with your body, they should be able to help you recognize when its time for an extra day off or when the intensity needs to be lowered to prevent illness or injury. A lot of people may have the right intentions, but it can often take an educated observer to help guide them in the right direction. I try to have all my athletes log their workouts daily so I can stay in tune with them and it after helps in the prevention of getting really sick or getting injured.
As for my own training, I had a good week this week. I'm starting to get back to a more traditional training scheme and I'm base training for Ironman St. George. Here's what I did this week:
Monday: Swim: Speedwork swim- 2650 yards in 50:46.
Tuesday: 1:20 of strength at DSC in the am and a low intensity 6.60 mile run in 51:17 in the afternoon
Wednesday: am Spin class for 40 min and then 2300 yard swim in 45:13, which I had to cut a little short to get to the office.
Thursday: 1:30 of strength at DSC in the am and a low intensity 5.45 mile run in 42:12 in the afternoon
Friday: am spin class, jumped in the car and drove to my office and did a 25.21 mile ride in 1:15hr on the Computrainer of the IM St. George course. Did just over 25 miles
Saturday: 1:15 of strength at DSC in the am and then right to the pool for a 3000 yard swim in 54:52.
Sunday: Ran the Applefest half marathon course with my friend Joe. Unfortunately my Garmin got turned on in my bag and it ran out of juice. I'm guess we did it in about 1:45 or so. Hopefully, that is a tough course.
I also want to give a shout out to 2 of my athletes who ran the Boston Prep 16 miler road race on Sunday. This is a KILLER course that is nothing but hills and they both did fantastic! If you're not familiar with the course, maybe the image below will help describe it. Nancy Epstein really pushed herself at the end to achieve her time goal and PR'ed! Josh Cleland also rocked it and PR'ed by over 12 minutes!!! Great work guys! I'm very proud of both of you and your hard work is paying off.
