On Sunday I began to feel sick. I attributed it to the cats at Ben and Kendra's house, and I'm still at least somewhat sure they acted as some kind of trigger, but I do also realize that back-to-back days of hard (long) workouts and sunburn definitely did not help. On Monday, I felt pretty beat up, ran that little mile race, and drove back to Baltimore, feeling worse along the way. We still did not have air conditioning at my house, which made sleeping on Monday night particularly difficult. I woke up on Tuesday feeling maybe slightly better, but not great. I made it into the pool, and felt alright, but had a little trouble breathing through my completely blocked nose. I didn't do the track workout that night, instead opting to sit on the track in 95 degree heat and watch everyone else run.
By Wednesday I was not any better. I had neither the legs nor the desire to go up to Wednesday Night Run to get punished, so I rode with Pat on our little Gunpowder loop. Again, the temperature came in around 95 when we went out to ride, and it was just those Triple H conditions that are so familiar to the Baltimore summer. Also not in our favor was the wind, which aided us on our way out, but bent us over on our way back. It was seriously one of the worst winds I've experienced coming back in on Eastern. We struggled. I had a splitting headache and it's based in my sinus area.
I figured at this point, I'd HAVE to be better by today. No way I wouldn't. Wrong. I felt even worse today, and I think it's coursing it's way south as I've developed a little cough. My brain hurts so bad my eyes won't focus - it's like that thing that gets implanted into people's brains in Mission: Impossible 3 and fries their brains and kills them. Nevertheless, I decided I should at least try to do something today. I drove up to Mt. Washington and rode the 9ish miles over to Owings Mills for the Thursday Night Ride. It's one of my favorite things to do and this is only the second time this year I've made it out. I had left with enough time to make it there, but didn't count on a road being closed due to a fallen tree. I had to go pretty far out of my way, and as a result had to haul ass and got there just in time to catch them. It was a small group tonight, and again we were treated to a super wind on our way up and out. My legs felt okay, and I was riding well on the climbs, but my headache was killing me.
I worked when I felt like working, and would drift off the back when I felt like it. I then started to get really achy, and just wanted to be done. Finally after 3 hours, somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 miles, I made it back to my car and headed home.
Now I'm pretty concerned. It's been 4 full days of sickness, and that seems excessive. It's not often I get sick - I believe this is the first time this year - but when I do it does tend to knock me out for a few days. Still, I don't feel like anything is getting better. The good news is that I'm close enough to race day that I could take a few days easy to recover (although I have done that already the past four days, but I guess I could chill out this weekend). The bad news is that I'm going to start freaking out if I don't feel better by tomorrow. Real annoying.
Anyway, with the passing of another month, I'll give myself a report card for May.
Swimming - B+. Some progress. I swam 39,000m this month, which is in line with what I did the previous two months. I had a few good workouts and really thought I was making some gains, but I was disappointed with my swim at Columbia. I think it's time to go back to what worked for me last year, which is more volume. Especially as I start working towards Ironman at the end of the summer, I need to get off these 10k weeks and move up to 15-20k weeks again, on 4-5 swims of 4-5k.
Cycling - A. I had a really good month of riding. 619 miles, which again is the most I've crammed into a month of May. My consistency has been great, I've had some really good Wednesday rides, and obviously "cultimated" with Friday/Saturday of this past weekend where we really got after it. I didn't do my more typical Memorial Day, where I would then go out and crush again on Sunday, but I think this will work better for me. I had a good split at Columbia, and am starting to feel a bit more comfortable on the TT bike again. After two years of not riding one, due both to a) not having one and b) truly being uncomfortable with the idea of getting wrecked again, it's nice to be out there again. My one complaint is that it does seem to work my knee pretty good, and I find that it's a lot stiffer following hard rides than if I were on my road bike.
Running - B+. A little off last month, and volume was quite low at just 125 miles. My previous May months have been more in the 150 range, which is a little lower due to bringing it down the week before and generally week after Columbia. This year I ran 20 of the 31 days, but had a bunch of shorter runs in there. Since May 14, when I ran 90 minutes, the most I've run has been 8 miles, which was the 10k race and a 2 mile warmup at Columbia. All other runs have been in the 6 or under range. I'm not real psyched about that, because I can't forget that I do have a long race next weekend. Of course, it's too late to do anything about it now, and realistically at Eagleman, whether I've run twenty long runs or none, it's just a brutal day. I'm planning on doing a longer run tomorrow and then will probably be back on track this month. My foot is still giving me trouble, but I had a couple of decent workouts and two decent mile races this month.
All in all, I feel as good as I can heading into next weekend's race. Of course, I'll feel much better when I...well, feel better. But as far as the training has gone this year, I've been really consistent, and think that, assuming conditions are more like 2009 than 2008 or 2010, a course best is within reason next Sunday. At this point we figure the water will be too warm for wetsuits, which will slow the swim down, so anything could happen there I guess.
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