Blaahhhh

Blerch. feeling like death warmed up at the moment. Full blown man flu going on.

This is one of those illnesses that I have seen coming for the last week or so. I have been trying desperately to avoid it, but with our four year old son running around the house with a nasty cough, the likelihood of avoiding sickness was slim. It finally started catching me up on Friday, with descent into proper misery inducing illness happening yesterday.

I took training pretty easy yesterday, with just a cruisy swim down the beach, but today I have given training a miss completely. The cold has really latched on today and there was never much question in my mind that I needed to give the body a rest. I usually work hard to avoid getting sick, but once I am definitely ill I turn hard into rest mode. My goal is usually to rest up early and give my body all the chances it needs to get well quickly. I have had too many experiences of illness lingering or relapsing because I have insisted on training through to bother with that these days. Now if I am sick I just accept it, rest up and focus on getting better.

Other than feeling rubbish I am not too concerned about my current bout of man flu. I have had a pretty good run with sickness of late, staying well in the entire lead up to Ironman WA, so I knew I was going to get ill sooner or later. You can't stay well forever. In fact in many ways you could say that if I have to get sick sometime, now is probably the time to do it, with no races anytime soon and training just starting to build up again. All it really means is that my rebuild into training will be delayed by a few days.

If I was to say I have learnt anything about handling training and illness over the last few years, then I think the above attitude would be it. Athletes often beat themselves up pretty badly over getting ill. Should I train, should I not? I am going to lose my fitness etc. Triathletes in particular are terrible at this from what I have seen. I certainly have had those thoughts in the past and still do now and then, but I have also got a lot better at simply rolling with the punches. Once I know I am sick beyond doubt I give myself the rest I need. Sure I may have to miss a couple of days of training, but then I get well and get on with it. In the bigger picture it is not something to stress over.

When sickness comes at bad times, like the week before a race, or in a critical phase of training, then obviously that can be a bit more stressful, but at other times like now, it simply doesn't need to be. Feeling sick feels bad enough, I don't need to make myself feel worse by obsessing over things that I can't change.

Being sick does mean I am super tired though, so with that in mind, I think I might head to bed.

Goodnight.