The urge to get back from illness and straight away jumping to high volume might seem the correct way to train for the missed workouts but viewing from a broader perspective, it isn't.
When an athletes gets ill, they feel like they are missing the workouts, they will lose fitness, their ideal build up is hampered by this illness but in a couple of days I don't think so fitness is lost on physiological levels, for sure the consistency gets broken but it can be viewed as forced long rest by nature. Taking it easy day by day seems to be the best way to approach it.
Erin Mawhinney of Canada was in pretty good shape & had a great build up as her GOAL-A race was The Marathon Project but she got ill before the race. She started the race but had to drop after 10 KM mark as she was surely feeling the illness had an impact on her overall body. An almost a month later, she ran Houston marathon in order to redeem her opportunity as she had the fitness to run a pretty fast race. She showed up big time by running 7 minute PB 2:29:36. She also took the training lightly after her drop at Marathon Project in order to not bury her body into the ground, there is no point in running the race in training and emptying the tank in training. If it is done like this, the cookie crumbles in races for sure in a pretty nasty way where the athletes can run their best performances as the tank has been emptied in the training. We need to know how hard to train in order to run the races at its peak and when backing off or taking lightly is the best option for us.
Crazy how recognizable this is! Glad I'm not the only one who's struggling with this :-)
I've had multiple encounters where I backed off instantly, but after multiple days of illess not breaking through, I cautiously restart exercising again. And then getting sick. Super frustrating!
Thanks for this! great checklist!
The urge to get back from illness and straight away jumping to high volume might seem the correct way to train for the missed workouts but viewing from a broader perspective, it isn't.
When an athletes gets ill, they feel like they are missing the workouts, they will lose fitness, their ideal build up is hampered by this illness but in a couple of days I don't think so fitness is lost on physiological levels, for sure the consistency gets broken but it can be viewed as forced long rest by nature. Taking it easy day by day seems to be the best way to approach it.
Erin Mawhinney of Canada was in pretty good shape & had a great build up as her GOAL-A race was The Marathon Project but she got ill before the race. She started the race but had to drop after 10 KM mark as she was surely feeling the illness had an impact on her overall body. An almost a month later, she ran Houston marathon in order to redeem her opportunity as she had the fitness to run a pretty fast race. She showed up big time by running 7 minute PB 2:29:36. She also took the training lightly after her drop at Marathon Project in order to not bury her body into the ground, there is no point in running the race in training and emptying the tank in training. If it is done like this, the cookie crumbles in races for sure in a pretty nasty way where the athletes can run their best performances as the tank has been emptied in the training. We need to know how hard to train in order to run the races at its peak and when backing off or taking lightly is the best option for us.
Crazy how recognizable this is! Glad I'm not the only one who's struggling with this :-)
I've had multiple encounters where I backed off instantly, but after multiple days of illess not breaking through, I cautiously restart exercising again. And then getting sick. Super frustrating!
It's something we all deal with.
I'm sitting here with influenza A, after I completed the steps in "The Compulsion to Train" almost exactly. 😔
Get well soon - we've all been there!