Back from rehab

The role of Dr. Drew shall be played by Coach Scott in this blog post.

I had about 2 weeks off from training, and normally when one needs to take time off you taper down. But, as mentioned in the previous blog post, everything quickly came to a halt. "We had to take drastic measures" Coach Scott says. So let me tell you about my little trip through training rehab.

The reason I call it "rehab" is because everyone that trains is a meth head. The body gets used to inputs (training, meth, whatever) and when you suddenly stop, the body isn't too happy. The first few days I felt like crap and had no energy, despite doing nothing related to training. My sleep was all jacked up and I was very jittery and anxious. About half way through the first week I came down with a migraine headache, most likely from the withdrawl of not training. How whacked out is this?!? I just wanted to sit around and relax and enjoy my time off, but the body was having none of that.

The following week had a few 20 minute easy workouts. The first run I tried felt like agony. I couldn't even gut out 20 minutes of running. Obviously not enough time off. So the rest of the week I continued to rest from anything swim, bike, run related. Instead I diverted my energy to working on the house. That weekend I was out of town, and found there's nothing like travel to make you feel like a slug. Lots of sitting around on planes and in airports, and no restrictions on eating. Cold Stone ice cream at 12 AM? Let's go! (Yes, this really did happen).

I got back home Sunday night, and was ready to go. In the airport I had e-mailed Coach Scott to please give me a workout on Monday, which is normally my rest day. I was requesting a workout on my rest day! That morning I headed out for a run, which was one of the best runs ever. No worries about heart rate or time, just going out and running. My trip was to New York City, and after that I really appreciated to be able to leave directly from my front door and run and be surrounded by the quiet desert.

My enthusiasm towards training came back down to regular levels later that week, and I'm pretty much back to the routine of normal training. The goal is to get through the race in Maui, and then I'll take time off from the structured training routine for more of a mental break. I'm not scheduling any races between now and Oct 24th (so far) because mentally I'm just not there and in the racing mood. Too much over the summer, so I'm still recovering from that.