The following should help to explain the dearth of blog entries over the last few weeks.
About a month ago I foolishly occupied myself on an off-day of training by felling trees and bucking up firewood for 8 hours. At the end of the day I was amazed at how tired I was from the effort. I scratched it up to overexertion and ignored it. The following day was a moderately-intense interval session and in the following few days I again had signs of fatigue. And again, I chose to believe it was just overreaching a bit with the training. I rested for a day and a half and, that Saturday morning, felt a lot better and ran the Cutthroat Classic, a 12 mile mountain race in the North Cascades. I didn't feel spectacular on it but didn't feel too bad, either. I took it as a sign that whatever fatigue I had been carrying was gone. The following week I resumed normal training and soon felt that same fatigue - inability to complete an intensity workout, less snap in my legs, etc. I again rested for a few days until my morning HR test numbers returned to normal levels. Around that time, we left for the Sun Valley training camp.
When we got to Sun Valley my HRs elevated a bit. I chalked this up to being at altitude. The first workout was a distance run and, despite the slightly higher HRs my energy was good. Then we had a sprint TT. My lap splits in the time trial were pretty erratic - I was dropping off the pace every time and really tying up in the legs. But again, we attributed this to altitude, lack of high intensity training thus far in the summer, and pushing too hard in the first heat. I felt like I recovered in the days following and had a good interval session, speed session and overdistance run. I thought I had gotten past any problems, and excitedly prepared for the 3.5K prologue TT. There again, despite conscious pacing efforts my legs tied up quickly and I felt like I totally blew up, and was way off the pace. I returned home from Sun Valley a bit dejected at my efforts and concerned that something in my fitness was off. What followed was almost a week and a half of full rest, complimented only with occasional easy distance sessions. In these workouts as well I noticed that my HRs were at least 10 bpm higher at a given intensity than they usually were. As well, my morning HR test continued to register high numbers.
Finally, at the urging of Scott and despite my own fears of doctor's offices, I went to our local doc, Dr. Joe Jensen, and had blood drawn to test for any abnormalities. During the exam he noticed that my spleen was enlarged, along with my lymph nodes, and I also had a bit of a sore throat. He suggested mono. I'd never had the illness before but have heard horror stories of entire seasons being destroyed by the infection. I hoped it wasn't so.
Blood work came back today: positive for mono. I don't have the normal high fatigue attributed with the average case of mono so my hope is that I don't have a very severe case. Doctor's orders are that I can exercise at low intensities as long as I don't stress my spleen or go into any glycogen depletion. My hope beyond hope then, is that I can maintain my aerobic base and not be pushed into bed rest, and slowly emerge from this illness relatively unscathed.
Here's hoping.
