Home again

I have been home again now for a few days and rapidly getting back to routine. I gave myself a couple of easy days, not training Thursday or Friday but haven't wanted to leave it too long as I have a number of big races coming up over the next month or so. 

The intention was to crack back into training this morning, but I woke up feeling rather average. A bit of a scratchy throat. Unfortunately falling ill after a racing trip away isn't unusual, but I was hoping to avoid it myself. Not sure I have fallen into full blown illness, but certainly not feeling wonderful. 

I did manage to get out for a bit of exercise today which felt okay at the time, but I have just checked my Garmin file for the session and the HR was a bit off the chart, certainly much higher than the session felt. A solid indication that things are not 100%. On top of that my HRV reading has been low for the last couple of days. Not really low, but much lower than it should be considering I have been sleeping well and not training. There is a very strong correlation between a decreased HRV and illness, so the low score is not all that surprising. Still, I am hoping that a good sleep tonight might mean I can bounce back without descending into total man flu territory. 

Aside from my own ailments, it has been a good day on the coaching side of things (at least I think it has been). I had two athletes competing in the Langkawi 70.3 today. Now, in my opinion Langkawi is one of the hardest events in the world. It is hot, humid and hilly. All the good H's. Given all that I think my athletes did great to get to the finish line, one of them even came 6th in her AG which I am particularly chuffed about. However, both of my athletes were a bit disappointing by their times, which were slower than they were expecting. Now personally I think times are largely irrelevant for a race like Langkawi, but it is natural for athletes to put expectations on themselves. However, we will certainly be having some conversations over the coming days about those expectations. Expectations are fine, but not if they are derailing or demotivating you by being unrealistic. I am personally very proud of their races and I think they should be too, so we might need to have a chat about that. 

First though, sleep time.