Training while you are sick
Norwegian nature and cabins
There is this thing called in Norway - julebord. A tradition. It is translated as “Christmas table”, and it is usually getting together with colleagues, booking a table at a restaurant, having nice meals and getting drunk. It starts as early as in the first week of November. Restaurants are packed.
December, the Christmas markets open, more gathering, more shopping. Everyone is in a hurry. This period of the year is a good season for the influenza virus to thrive.
As a father of two kids, one in a school year and the other in kindergarten, and a full time working doctor seeing over 30 patients a day, it is not easy not to be exposed to the flu.
And I got it last week. In this post, I will describe how Gordo and I approached the sick period.
The last proper training was six days ago.
Already during the swim session on Wednesday, I felt irritated throat and the pool water made it worse. I woke up groggy, with headache and sore-throat. My wife told that I coughed during the night. HRV was down and the skin temperature was up. No fever though. Sickness on the way. I aborted all training for that day, moved running to Friday. My optimistic side thought I would get better.
I wrote a note on the Training Peaks. Suddenly, all the sessions disappeared from the plan. Instead, “a 30 min easy movement” sessions appeared. Gordo removed the sessions.
Friday morning, still not good: HRV down, low quality sleep despite clocking more than 8 hours. I drove to work, took a 500mg paracet, finished the work. I was feeling better but still not good.
With four other friends, we had a planned cabin trip to the mountains on Saturday. It was a good opportunity to rest.
Norwegian winter sounds harsh but once you get used to it, and especially the cabin life give you proper healing.
I haven’t found a full answer yet why I find peace and serenity in the mountains.
There are very few moments in life that can be better than having a good warm cup of coffee with some wife-made apple pie, sitting in front of a fireplace in a cold cabin with friends after a cold and wet hike. Sitting with wool blankets on the shoulders.
It was a good evening. Talking about everything and at the same time about nothing :)
In Norway we have a tourists’ association with over 600 cabins all over the country. You buy a membership and get a master key with access to almost all of them. Many of those cabins are for self-service. It is a trust-based system. You book online. You find it clean, use and leave it clean. If you buy food from the storage room inside the cabin, then you pay it online. If you can’t pay it online for whatever reason, you write down what food you used and leave a note. You get an invoice sent to your address. I have used those cabins many times. I wish next generations will be able to use them too.
For the next morning, I reserved a nice breakfast for all of us in a hotel nearby and we drove home after that. It was a short trip, less than 24 hours, but felt much longer.
Sunday evening, Gordo and I had a planned videocall, and I recorded it. It will be available for everyone. I get so many insights during those video calls, and it should be available for you too.
Deloading
In the last 8 weeks, I haven’t had a deloading phase. We took “the sickness opportunity” to deload. Gordo told me to take the next 48 hours easy, not more than 30 minutes of light exercise per session, and not more than 1 hour per day.
He reassured me that it is ok to take a few days off while not feeling well. It is not about a few days. It is about the long game and not being miserable. It is about finding peace. It is about a satisfying life.
Gordo wrote: “This feeling of needing to rush is good for getting things done but we pay a price in serenity, anxiety and daily presence.”
Wise words!
Stay healthy,
Bek
Hey Bek, ok this is very interesting because i now have a question on the 1000days(its a principle i think you are following right)?
1. How do you deal with the psychology of missing out on two consecutive days, i assume that one day may not totally put you off depending on personality type, but a few days? (Ps i find myself resetting to 1 every time something happens and can’t seem to break out of this loop)
2. About your conversation with Gordo, are you going to post them here?
Hope you are feeling great and great article as always. 😃
Very timely Bek as I am just going through the same thing with a solid 10 week block and now a moderate cold. We share a similar latitude (I'm in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) so winter and darkness is upon us. I relect on Gordo's advice to protect ourselves from ourselves as some of us training obsessed folks will stress over CTL losses short term. Appreciate the reminder to be smart, take the zeros if needed, or keep movement going in the light green zone and take advantage to unload. And one can then get back on the CTL ladder sooner rather than digging a bigger hole. Keep it up! And you left us hanging with: My wife said...:).