Week 62 – Training while sick

 

One of the things they never tell you about when you train for a major endurance event is how physically frail you actually feel.

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My body feels like it’s breaking down during the two heavy weeks of exercise. On day 1 of the two week stretch, I am feeling awesome and by the end of the two weeks, I feel like every part of my body needs to go into the shop for repair.

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No such luck, of course.

I thought it was just my age, and then I read about getting sick while training.

Turns out that heavy workouts have the same effect as a lot of stress on your body, they suppress your immune system.

So then you read this blog post about how while you’re feeling like shit, your body is unable to ward off illnesses … And if you have a kid that means you’re in a for a world of hell.

And if you co-workers who have small kids its worse. You’re going to be sick. A lot.

So while you’re trying to train for this endurance event, have enough brain cells to do your job, and be a quarter decent husband and father, every airborne disease is aiming straight at your weakened body to give it a kick in the gonads.

I mean, seriously. I haven’t been this sick so often in my life. And even if I don’t catch anything, I am feeling so tired that I can’t disambiguate between feeling sick and feeling tired.

And because it’s hard to disambiguate and you learn to power through the pain, you end up doing stupid things. One stupid thing is to do a workout with a fever. And if it’s a swim where you are feeling even a little bit nauseous… let’s just say it can get ugly.

This past Tuesday it took me a while to figure out that the body chills had little to do with the water and everything to do with the fever my son gave me.

So what to do? So I go read the article that made me aware that every two weeks I would feel sick, and it suggested that I avoid small sick children while I am doing heavy workouts. Wonderful. How exactly am I supposed to avoid my son while I am training? And what do I tell my co-workers who are virus vectors: please put on a face mask?

This made me realize I was not in the target demographic of the blogger.

That left me with one option, the stark realization that you train while sick, just slower and less. And hopefully when the damn race comes your body has recovered enough to finish the stupid race.

Sickness and Diets

One of the things about being sick is that my ability to control my eating is limited. My will power is told to not come to the pity party I throw…

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So we had a couple of bad days where I was eating a lot of junk so I wouldn’t feel hungry.

Thankfully I acknowledged the data trend and took action.

And the good news is we are still on track …

 

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