I am so not a good patient. I have been sick with the flu for the past 9 days. I guess I am just joining the rest of the people who have been suffering with it but still, this year I have been sick way too many times. Not really sure why, but it’s messing with my training consistency big time.
It started with a dry cough, transformed into a head cold, and has now settled on my chest and thus am barking like the proverbial dog. I have been in and out of bed all day every day – it is just exhausting. I hadn’t trained for 6 days and then managed 2 sessions in a row, but nothing too spectacular, and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible with my bark. I tried going for a walk yesterday morning with Damien and as soon as I need to get more air into my lungs I start coughing and get short of breath. We had to turn around and come home. I had to cancel all my chat appointments yesterday (I did one while I was having my hair done on Thursday and barked all the way through and ended up as hoarse as!). Unfortunately though I had to run around town trying to get my new Blackberry sorted out as Telstra had given me a dodgy SIM card. I so wanted to kill someone, preferably someone from Telstra.
So, I have a new Blackberry, but it’s not set up for email yet nor anything else. I’m so slow on the sms’s at this stage. I really hate it when you get new technology and have to learn how to drive it. I especially hate the set up – I am actually scared about setting up my email as I KNOW it will not go as smoothly as it should.
Dragged my sorry butt out to my mum’s for dinner last night, really wasn’t feeling like it but glad I did. We sat outside watching the group of magpies feeding their young (with our left over meat) and top knot pigeons sitting in their nests and doing their thing. It is so peaceful out there. Their new mango plantation is looking pretty impressive too. We also visted the chooks – mum has a pet chook that she talks to and picks up, it’s quite amusing.
I got up at 4am today. My body is really not sure when it’s day or night at the moment. I was feeling good enough to go out for a walk before the sun came up. All I want to do is keep my muscles moving. Someone has asked how to maintain motivation when sick – I was thinking about it as I was walking and really I believe motivation comes down to your commitment level and levels of commitment will vary all the time (I’m in the process of writing an article on this).
While sick firstly you need to understand that your body is trying to recover so you should not be training hard while ill – whatever exercise you do, don’t try to break any records. It’s important to continue to do things that make you feel good and are good for you – take a relaxing bath, give yourself a facial, have a massage (providing you aren’t contagious), paint your toenails, do some stretching and flexibility work, eat as well as you can, do some leg conditioning work (leg lifts, lunges, bridges, butt squeezes, etc) if not up to a full scale weight training session, take a leisurely walk if not up to anything more strenuous, drink lots of water, get lots of rest.
If you are up to a gym workout of sorts, make it a full body weights session of moderate reps to keep all those muscles moving until you are ready to go that bit harder and get back to your normal regime.
So, that’s what I will be doing either today or tomorrow. I’m getting rather bored with not being able to do much, but hopefully I’m on the other side now. Yesterday the chemist advised me to go to the doctor so I tried to book only to discover my entire doc surgery is booked out for the next week. Ridiculous.
Have a great weekend everyone.
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