Benefits

Fair to say that stepping away from exercise is not something that has come easy to me, at times I have really struggled with it. However, I would be lying if I said that reducing my exercise hasn't come with some positives. Today I am enjoying two of those positives.

The first positive of not training much is that I don't think I am getting as sick as I used to. It isn't that I am picking up less colds, but my gut feel is that the colds are less severe than they have been. This week I have been feeling a little under the weather, such that I expected to wake up yesterday feeling rotten. However, yesterday morning I woke up okay(ish), not 100% but certainly well enough to go to work and generally function as a human. This is the second time since I stopped training that this has happened to me. I am wondering whether, now that I am not exercising, the body has more resources to fight off these little illnesses.

Certainly when I was training I would find that when a cold caught me up, it caught me up hard. It sort of makes sense I guess, while you are very fit because of your training, you are also very run down. It is perhaps not surprising that it takes your body more time to fight off such an affliction. Not at the moment though it seems, at the moment it seems like I am starting to recover before the cold really can take a good hold. I'll take that as a win for sure.

The second benefit of not training that I got to experience today is the pure joy of rolling over and staying in bed. My plan this morning had been to do a bit of light exercise, however, the spring weather in Perth has turned a bit nasty and to the weather this morning was mildly horrible. After years of forcing myself out of bed no matter what the weather, it was great to be able to hear the bad weather out my window today and opt to stay in bed instead, feeling no guilt. It really was rather nice.

Yep, given the choice I would much prefer to be exercising still, but given that I don't have a lot of choice at the moment, I am more than happy to take advantage of the benefits that come from resting up. Some definite silver linings to the grey clouds today.