…I wonder how long I have to count? My training as been a huge disappointment lately, but I am trying to stay positive, and at least it’s still relatively early in the year!
I went to the South earlier last week for a business trip for Ergon. We flew to Little Rock on Sunday, then flew to Raleigh, drove to Columbia, SC, and then I flew home putting me back in Boulder on Wednesday night. Tuesday, I started getting an itch in my throat. I thought it was just an annoying minor cold or allergies. I finally was able to ride on Thursday, but because it had snowed and the air was cold, I tried to be smart and ride the trainer so the air I was inhaling was warm. I had a good 2 hour session and felt great afterwards. Friday, I woke up and was totally run down and burning with a moderately high fever. That was it. I had a bad sinus infection, started up some antibiotics, and had to dump my training for the rest of the week and weekend.
Today is Monday. I’m feeling much better, but I’m still totally exhausted and there is stuff in my head. The good news is that I don’t have a fever and my head and teeth don’t hurt so bad. It’s so hard to wait it out! I’m feeling very frustrated because I get in a good little 3-4 day block of training, but then something will happen. It will snow, I’ll have to go out of town with no bike, I’ll get sick, or I’ll just totally struggle with motivation and I’ll be off the bike for 1-1.5 weeks out of every few weeks, and then I have to start all over again. This off-season is not going as I would like it to, but tomorrow is a new day. It’s amazing how easy it is to take our good health and fortune for granted, and how bad things seem when we don’t have it, especially as athletes. Things can’t always go as planned, so I suppose it’s how we deal with adapting. Being less rigid, being fluid. Saying it’s ok to start over. Here’s to starting over again later this week. Maybe this frustrating time is to re-ignite my desire to ride so it doesn’t just feel like “training.” I tend to struggle when the singletrack is under snow.
I am going to be doing some videos of a reading of some of my journal from the Claro Brasil Ride. I wrote my race reports first because the journal entries are very raw and actually kind of pathetic, but most of them were written within hours of finishing the tough days. I think they will be good content.
For now, dreaming of brighter days….
