Sunday, February 1, 2009

2 steps forward, 1 step back

My training is on hold due to me picking up some type of virus or something during my last business trip - damn that recycled air! We headed to Disney with my parents for a quick Sunday thru Friday tour of 4 theme parks and I started feeling some aches later in the day on Wednesday. Earlier that morning, I ran 50 minutes (4 x 1 @ TP) in the resort's fitness center and just assumed the aches were due to riding Tower of Terror, Rock & Roller Coaster over and over and the run. Boy was I wrong. I woke up Thursday AM congested, swollen glands, and a heaviness in my lungs. The heaviness turned into non stop dry coughing which progressed into a wet cough that felt like I swallowed boiling soup every time I coughed.

We arrived back home Friday evening, too late to see the doctor so it looks as though I'm in a holding pattern until Monday, when I hope to get some relief. BTW - 7 days to the day from first flight to onset of symptoms. I guess I need to get one of those SARS masks that were all the rage a few years ago and wear it when I travel which will be again in 8 days.

What's frustrating is that I was seeing big gains in my swim endurance, run times and efforts at threshold power on the bike. Better to get this over with now as my A race is still 237 days away!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Howdy, it's Kindzia from over at A Ticket To Kona. I was wondering how you like the Endurance Nation training plan or give us an update as to how you are developing over the past few weeks/months (even with a little sickness mixed in). Can you share some of the features, what you like about it, is there anything that you don't like about it, what you are learning?

I think there are a lot of athletes that would be interested in monitoring and following along with some of the specifics.

Hope you are doing well. Keep up the good work.

Scott said...

Kindzia, Thanks for the comment. How are things in metro Atlanta? I grew up in Smoke Rise and several years after college, returned to the area and lived in Cumming up until 2004. My folks and brother are still in the area - Big Canoe, so I get back fairly often.

My sickness ended up being the flu. My youngest came down with it on Sunday and her nose swab came back positive. Today is the first day I've felt pretty good which is about 10 days since getting sick.

Regarding Endurance Nation, I've been pretty impressed. I'm coming from a cycling background and even though I was coached by Dave Morris, I was pretty much a self coached athlete (he would send me a customer training plan every month)so the EN program fits me well. The bike portions of the plans for the Out Season are exactly what I'm used to - threshold intensity for 8 to 20 minute intervals. The idea is to get fast now with little time investment and then add far on top of fast. The same is true for the run. From what I can tell, the run portion is modeled after the Jack Daniel's program / philosophy and in a few short weeks, I've seen significant improvement in my run times.

The on-line EN community is very strong and active. There are a lot of knowledgeable people in the "haus" as they call it and they are willing to offer help and guidance. Rich and Patrick are constantly coming up with new pod casts, collateral training material such as ebooks or videos that really help people become comfortable being "self coached". The membership also includes data tools to track your performance and identify your training zones for swimming, biking, and running.

For the age group athlete who has limited time to train due to obligations such as a job, family, pets, etc, Endurance Nation in my opinion, is the best way to go.