2 days before the start of the race Lincoln Woods (the Park that contains the pond the swim was held in) was shut down due to high bacteria counts in the water. It was reopened the day before the race supposedly after it had tested safe again. After the race many of my friends and a large number of people on Slowtwich (an online triathlon discussion site) spoke about getting sick after swimming in the pond. At first I took a defensive position thinking it was a small minority that got sick and could be unrelated. (I think this was me being in denial!). However on the wednesday after the race I started to feel a little bit under the weather but I figured it was nothing... just me recovering from the race. Saturday (a week after the race) was my first real hard workout on the bike since the race. I took my road bike out for a 3 hour ride at steady decent effort. It felt way harder than the numbers showed. Something was off. I was struggling to breathe and just didn't feel fabulous for the ride. I figured maybe I recover slower than I think. That night I had an awful sinus headache and felt pretty crappy. Sunday morning I was supposed to go for an open water swim with the girl. Unfortunately I'd been up sick most of the night not able to sleep so I skipped the swim as I felt like holy hell. Monday morning I found myself in the doctor's office. I can't walk up the 3 flights of stairs to my appartment without feeling out of breath, I'm congested, sinus's hurt, and feel like I have a giant head cold. I've had night sweats and feel very feverish in the middle of the night and generally feel very run down. I didn't spend long at the Doctor's office before I left with a perscription for antibiotics to kick this thing.
Today is tuesday and I'm feeling a little better. I optimistically got up this morning and put running clothes on thinking I'd get a 30 minute run in today. I haven't run since the Amica a week ago and I'm anxious to start again and get moving. (I only biked and swam last week to recover fully) However I'm not terribly smart when it comes to recovery as we know. Fortunately I have an amazing girl in my life who's smart enough to tell me I'm crazy to try and run on day 2 of antibiotics and I need to let them do their thing and not spend energy on workouts that should go towards healing my body up as fast as possible or I risk setting myself back further. She's right of course. And I hate that she's right and love her for it at the same time. Its just frustrating as B2B is 15 weeks away. I feel like the second I crossed the finish line of the Amica a giant clock started ticking down the seconds to B2B. There's no stopping its approach now. Its looming HUGE on the horizon and I need to get ready for it. I recently discovered the expression online of "training scared" meaning that you are doing your best to prepare yourself for the race out of fear and respect for the distance. I currently feel that way. And I need to convert that fear into preparedness. And this setback is a frustrating block in that path. I know it will be short lived... but still. I want it out of the way!
So in the meantime I've planned out all my upcoming workouts around my work travel and life obligations and put all of it into trainign peaks so its all outlined in front of me. I ended up adapting the training plan in "Training Plans for Multisport Athletes" by Gale Bernhardt. She has a "13 weeks to a sub 13 hour Ironman" plan in the book that I took all the workouts and distances from and then shifted them around to fit my life. She gives great instructions on how to adapt plans to your lifestyle and outlines all the workouts so really all you have to do is execute and all will be well. I have to say though I do hate the fact that its week 1 of 15 (I stretched the plan for 2 extra weeks as I'm away those weeks for work so it will be hard to train properly those weeks). So already I'm missing workouts and I've only just started the plan! Oh well... I'll be fine I know. Here's a snapshot of some of the training laid out...
So nothing to do at this point but stretch a little, maybe foam roll, watch some tour de france and wait till I'm well enough to train again. Tick tock, tick tock... can you hear it? B2B is coming...
scary, I never really thought about bacteria...which is more likely than the jellyfish, sharks and piranha that my wild imagination sometimes conjures up. Congrats on the half-iron! 15 weeks is a pretty good time frame. Think of it like three sets of build/recovery. And you already have a great base. You're going to do awesome.
ReplyDeleteI think our wild imagination can alwasy conjure up something to think about in the water. I try and shut that off as much as possible though! 15 weeks is a good amount of time, but losing most of this week to recover has me panicked! I'm anxious to get going again! I know I'll be fine though. Thanks for the words of support!
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