Sweet, Holy Relief

Finally, finally I managed to do some training today.

Sweet, Holy relief has that been a long time coming. It felt so, so good.

So I think I have finally managed to shake this cold, or at least shake the worst of it anyway. Every night this week I my litmus has been how I feel in the evening before bed. My test has been that if I was falling in a heap at the end of the day then my body needed more rest.  Monday and Tuesday I was feeling varying degrees of awful. Wednesday I was simply mediocre, but last night I felt almost normal. Don't get me wrong I was still occasionally coughing like I had breathed in drinking chocolate (don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about), but other than that I am feeling okayish. Okayish enough to train anyway.

While I feel okay I wanted to be a bit conservative with training this morning, I didn't want to go out and break any records. I specifically didn't want a session where I would be tempted to go hard, so that unfortunately meant no Friday Swim Smooth session, instead I went for a spin on the Kickr. Obviously riding on the trainer can be rather painful, but the good thing about it is that it doesn't have to be. The Kickr also has the advantage that the intensity is highly controllable. That meant I was able to dial in the right intensity and not budge from that, which allowed me to train, but prevented me from getting carried away.

It was just the sort of session that I was after. 80 minutes of low intensity spinning. Enough time to make me feel like I did a bit of work, but easy enough that I hopefully haven't made anything worse.

So far so good. I seem to have got through the session unscathed. The little triathlete in my brain is jumping up and down telling me I should now train this afternoon, but the little coach in my head is telling the little triathlete to sit down, shut up and stop being an idiot. I think in this case I will listen to the little coach. Take it slow.

Assuming I am still feeling okay later tonight I am still planning on training tomorrow morning though. I am pretty sure I will pull up fine tonight, but I won't count that chicken early. Even if I do head out tomorrow though I will still be careful to keep it reasonable. Nothing too long or too hard.

This cold has been a frustrating interlude in my return to training, but it has happened and being annoyed about it won't make it unhappen (that is a word now). Getting frustrated and trying cram fitness is only going to result in injury so now that I am returning to training I need to make sure I do it smart. Slowly build back into it. The fitness will return, I just need to be patient and follow the process. The end result will take care of itself.