Icky Sicky

I woke up Wednesday morning to find that at some point over night, I had been bitten by a bug. Runny nose, drainage and just an over all feeling of fatigue.

It is not at all surprising that the bug bit me. This weekend was really, really stressful followed by two nights of really challenging workouts that left me unable to walk like a normal human being. Stress - both physical and emotional, can seriously effect your immune system leaving you venerable to all sorts of things.

For me, it always seems to be a sinus cold. The last five times I have been "sick" it's been sinus related. But this time, once and for all, I am taking the orders to cease all workouts and do not pass go until I am feeling 100%. Not 92%, not 98% - but 100%. Of course, this seems like it is taking an ETERNITY!!!

A blogger friend of mine has been suffering from an injury the past couple weeks. While her set-back is much more serious than my little cold, someone posted a comment to her blog that I thought was particularly intriguing: "When we are healthy, we never think we will get sick/injured, but when we are sick/injured, we think we will never be healthy again. Neither of these thoughts are true." It was something like that.

Why is it so hard for athletes to listen to their bodies and just rest up when sick/injured? Seriously - we will take every little advantage to make us faster and better, down to the flavor of our Gu (will the new Blackberry Rocktane really shave one 100th second off my bike split?) but tell someone to lay on the couch and do nothing for four days so that they can return to training faster, stronger, better and they throw a hissy fit!

Last year I even raced while I was sick and it sucked. I ended up with being 5 whole minutes slower than the previous year (that might as well be an hour in a sprint tri) and I stayed sick for another whole week after I raced. So yeah, not worth it.

It's a hard pill to swallow. I was just starting a new power block in training this week and was really getting into the new, more challenging workouts then... BLAMO! Sick and forced to put out 0 watts riding the couch for hours on end and drinking gallons of bland fluids (why can beer hydrate just as well as water???).

Judging from the way this is running it's course so far, I will be starting back on Monday, hopefully well rested and ready to take the next week of training head on with no bugs in site!