The last week has been exceptional for training. Coming off some mediocre races last weekend in Silver Star I nonetheless have felt that my fitness has really been coming together and that I'm on track for some great performances at US Nationals and beyond. In the past five days we've completed three high-intensity workouts where I've skied more that eight kilometers at roughly 2min/km pace, comparable to sprint race pace. These have been great sessions for installing that feeling of race speed into my muscles, and for working on technique at high speed, adjusting power phases, etc. And last night Odin and the other winter-oriented deities decided to throw us a bone and piled on 8+" of snow to the valley floor, making almost all the MVSTA trails skiable. And so, to wake up this morning feeling less than the weather outside should compel me to feel, I'm a bit disappointed.
Sickness is inevitable, especially during the holidays. Short of Scrooge, the Grinch, and hermits living under bridges with no singing voices and a dislike of sweets, EVERYONE gets social at Christmas-time. I generally pick my battles, and try to be precise about spending time in big groups - I'll dose up on Vitamin-C and other useful immune-boosters, and be careful about shaking hands and licking the eyeballs of the runny-nosed vectors that seem to multiply at the tail-end of the year. But try as I (or you) might, we catch a cold.
Most of the time when I wake up with the harbingers of a cold setting in, I have two options: I could continue on the scheduled training, be it intensity or distance, or opt to (try to) nip the illness in the bud by climbing back in bed with Netflix and a thermos of tea. Today's scheduled workout, given the abundance of snow, was to be an aerobic threshold-up-to-lactate threshold ski in the Rendezvous. Nikki was particularly excited.
But as we are so close to Nationals, I'm not taking any chances. I'd
rather spend two days laying low and kicking this mucous-laden irritant
than risk a week of lingering symptoms and less-than-optimal training.
So, I've lined up my front-line battalion of defenders:
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| Vitamin-C, Echinacea and other weird Asian-herb tinctures, and Hammer antioxidants - the A Team |
