It’s been a while since I’ve posted and with that I can say this spring certainly did not go the way I had planned or hoped. I got sick, really sick, and had to slow down, pressing pause…to get well.
I had a big block of Spring races I was really excited to do and see how my race fitness was going into 2023. The 2 day Sea Otter race block I had planned for the third weekend in April, was one I was particularly excited about. Saturday was my A race, so the plan was to lay it all out on the line for Saturday and then show up on Sunday and give whatever I had left in the body for the shorter race.
Sea Otter is my favorite local race. However, historically I have never had a great race at the event. So I decided this year was my year to shine. I had my focus on Saturday’s race, the Sea Otter Fuego XL, a 100k race with 8000 ft of climbing. I felt this course played to my strengths: long climbs and lots of elevation gain.
The week of Sea Otter, I woke up Tuesday with a sore throat. I tried not to panic…I did all the things to keep any illness at bay. Nettie pot, zinc, vitamins, humidifier, sleep, nothing seemed to work. My sore throat was extremely painful, nothing like I had ever experienced before, I couldn’t sleep at night due to the pain. I then lost my voice and had a productive cough. The night before the race I took a covid test, it was negative. In hindsight I shouldn’t have even tried to race, but I thought I had to give it a go. I thought maybe the severity of all of this is in my head and I’m ok to race. So I showed up at the start.
The start was painful…an all out sprint to get to the singletrack for proper position, I held on and was happy with the start, I then “sort of” held my own for the first two hours, but then the lights went out and the struggle was real, I wasn’t even ⅓ of the way through the race. Continuing on for another 30 minutes, I tried to crawl my way out of it, but it wasn’t happening, people that I had passed previously were passing me. I felt like I was slowly falling backwards.
At that point, another 4 hours of racing, let alone riding wasn’t in the cards for me. I thought if I had any chance of salvaging my race for tomorrow, I shouldn’t go on. Tomorrow would be a shorter race around 2 hours so I thought I should be fine to manage since my first two hours today were “ok-ish”
Long story short…I did not make it to the race the next day. I was worse. A sore throat so painful like I have never experienced before. Excessive coughing, fatigue. Inability to sleep. I was started on a 10 day course of antibiotics.
About a week into the antibiotics I started to feel better. But 3 days after the antibiotic course was completed my symptoms returned. Which also happened to be on the weekend I had another race scheduled and had to make the decision not to race.
This ended up being the right call, the following day my symptoms worsened to not even being able to get out of bed. And resulted in a trip to urgent care. My strep and Covid swabs were negative. Chest Xray was negative. But my symptoms persisted which then landed me a referral to ENT. Not a whole lot of answers, except some sort of respiratory infection, lingering inflammation and lots of sputum in the upper respiratory tract.
At this point I took exercise off the table for a week to let my body heal. Scratched yet another race from the schedule. I needed time to get myself well.
I slowly started to ease back into riding. It’s been frustrating, as my fatigue level was high. My baseline of where I started was not where I left it. It feels like having to start from ground zero and the hard part is accepting this new baseline and not comparing myself to where I was.
It’s been 6 weeks and I feel like I am slowly making progress. I still have a chronic cough exacerbated by exercise. I’d say my endurance is about 80% of what it used to be.
I’m working on acceptance and not comparison, with the hopes I can still return to where I was fitness wise with time. Knowing I need to slow down and listen to my body. Saying ‘no’ if I feel like I’ve over extended. Focusing on sleep and all things recovery.
Fueled By TheFeed.
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