IMCDA 2015 Training Update-Week #8(of 26)-Sickness Setbacks

Week #8 did not get off to a good start. I didn’t feel too bad Monday morning, but I did have a bit of a stomach most of the day. I was planning to do a bike trainer ride when I got home from work, but on the ride home things took a turn for the worst. I started getting chills and body aches. I ended up eating some white rice for dinner and then curling up in blankets on the sofa. I started to feel like I was burning up, but yet could not get out of blankets for I was also freezing. A really weird feeling.

My wife was giving me drops of Oil of Oregano along with drinking warm water with apple cider vinegar all night. We thought it may be the flu, so we were trying to ward it off with some recommendations we had seen others have success with.

The burning up continued throughout the night and I registered a fever of 101 and eventually over 102 deg F. I slept on the sofa all night waking up every hour so. It was snowing all night too, so I was able to watch the snow falling in the floodlight when I did wake.

Eventually morning came and my wife woke up and then I went into the bedroom to sleep in the bed. I continued to sleep until 1:30 that afternoon.  I had a little vegetable soup in the afternoon, but could not stomach too much else. The fever had subsided and I was back down to ~97 deg by that evening. I still had some stomach issue for the next day or two, but was back to normal fairly quickly. I think it was most-likely some stomach bug, since the flu usually lasts longer and has respitory issues along with it.

The iThlete Pro HRV apps’ training guide pretty much nailed it on the head here…

iThlete Training Guide-HRV when sick

You can see the big drop of where I was sick here and then how I recovered over the next 3 days after. That was basically how it went too. I also did a pretty intense bike trainer workout on the Wed after being sick, which was probably not the brightest idea. As you can see below, I had a green dot in the high 70’s, but then dropped off again from coming back too hard. Pretty cool.

iThlete HRV Timeline-IMCDA 2015 Week 8

I did about an hour LSD Swim on Friday. Not swimming all week made it feel a bit of a struggle. I just didn’t have any flow in my stroke. It was very choppy and clumsy feeling.

Endurance Sports Expo

On Saturday I headed down toward Valley Forge to the Endurance Sports Expo. I have to remind myself that I really don’t like expos. I found myself trying to quickly and stealthily sneak through the aisles trying not to get cornered by pushy vendors. I found myself wondering why I drove an hour to do this. My only goal was to try to find a neoprene swim cap for Ironman Coeur d’Alene, but there were none. It was a complete waste of time. I did sit in on a short seminar on mindfulness techniques for endurance byMichelle Evans-Chase, Phd & Bruckner Chase which was entertaining. Bruckner ran a couple videos of his long distance swims through water infested with jellyfish. I was stung one time on the head swimming and couldn’t deal with it, this guys was getting constantly stung for hours. Crazy!

The other reason I regretted going to the expo was the impending snowstorm coming. I don’t believe the weather guys too much these days since they have been so wrong this year, but this one started earlier than I thought and it was coming down by the time I left the expo hall. It was a slow and slippery ride home, but I eventually made it. I really could have used those hours to work on painting my new pain cave.

Sunday was a really nice day. Temps got into the 50’s with sunshine. All I needed was a long sleeze shirt and probably could have gotten away with a short sleeve. The sun was out and blasting away. I ended up doing 14 miles on the 1 mile track at Rodale Fitness Park. Running in mile loops seems so free after running on the treadmill for 13.

Training Peaks-IMCDA 2015 Training Week #8

Training Peaks PMC 2015-02-22 17.59.22