Sick Day

One of the unique things about being an athlete is that we don’t really get allotted sick days from our jobs. Your competitors rarely give you a pass at the next competition because you were sick for a few days getting ready. So most of the time, athletes just push through minor sickness and try to stay training if at all possible.

This morning, I woke up extremely nauseous and unable to eat anything. My best guess is that I picked up some sort of food poisoning yesterday because it did not feel like a flu. Swim practice was scheduled from 7-9; but I realized that if my stomach could not take on breakfast and my usually morning coffee, I probably had no business knocking out 4 miles in the pool.

Earlier this week, I had some blood work done. It showed that I was extremely worn down and my immune system was under stress. Because next week is a “recovery week,” my coaches decided to press on with normal training this week. So I probably have a depressed immune system to blame for my morning troubles. Sometimes your body just can’t fight off sickness when it is so busy trying to deal with training.

The one good thing about having to take the morning off is that it gave me a chance to catch up on my paperwork. Pentathlon is complicated and there is a ton of paperwork I have to keep up with to train. This morning I had to find a pool in Washington DC to train in next week (more on that trip in an upcoming blog). Then I had to schedule training sessions for my pool here at the OTC. I had to file a reimbursement for World Championships including converting from three different currencies into dollars (during which I discovered the hotel over billed me leading to more paperwork). There is a riding camp in California in two weeks for which I had to find flights and rental car information. And that is just the tip of the iceberg…

I am feeling a lot better this afternoon so I will at least get to knock out a swimming workout and the day will not be a total waste in the athletic sense. It’s never fun to be sidelined because you are sick, but maybe my body just had enough and needed a break. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be up for my 14-mile long run and back to 100%.