I forgot about the Flu

I forgot about the flu. Okay, not that the flu exists, I know that. I know it makes you miserable for a week and everyone avoids because you look and sound awful, I remembered that. I even know a bit about the great flu epidemic of 1918. In fact I've had the flu a lot in my life, one of the joys of being an unfit asthmatic couch potato as a child, so I'm pretty familiar with the whole experience.

What I forgot about was the after-flu. You know, the week or two after the flu where, despite having kicked the virus, you still feel like horrible, like you've just been run over by a road train. You're tired, still a little sniffly and generally cantankerous.

The reason I forgot about the after-flu is that I haven't had to deal with it for a while. The last three years I've had a flu shot. I still got the flu, but it wasn't as bad, didn't last as long, and there was no after-flu. This year I didn't quite get around to getting a shot, next week always seemed like a convenient time. And then I got the flu last week, so now I have the after flu, and I'm really not enjoying it.

I'll be getting that flu shot. This week.

Things to do in the off season

Things I've been up to in the past months:

• Sleeping in (anything past 7am counts)
• Spending time with friends of the triathlon and non-triathlon variety
• Heading out to the 'Wack to see my parents
• Setting unrealistic goals in the ST Swim Challenge
• Catching up on my reading
• Discovering new authors (thanks Jason!)
• Planning my apartment repainting
• Procrastinating about painting
• Snowshoeing!
• Running the Fall Classic 10km (52.48.8, 41 out of 172 F3039, 117 out of 570 women)
• Getting sick but not getting stressed about it
• Trying to be girly (next time I won't wear a dress the same colour as the photographer's backdrop!)
• Going to parties, and staying past 9:30pm
• Finding more cool Google programs
• Generally relaxing, recharging and taking it easy

Swim Challenge

So this is technically the "off" season, in which one supposedly takes time "off" from training to mentally, physically and socially recover. Some crazy folk don't seem to do much downtime, if the majority of triathletes are like the posters on the Slowtwitch forum then the average triathlete spends their off season trying to get stronger, faster, skinnier, and fitter. I'm not sure how this differs from their on-season, or how this counts as taking time "off" but they seem to think it works.

Yes, I may mock them but I am also quick to join them.

Some Slowtwitchers started a swim challenge for November, where you set your swim goals for the month, track them with a Google spreadsheet and post updates on the forum. As I mentioned in an earlier post, after my month long recovery from Ironman I decided to focus on my swim, so this seemed like a grand idea.

I did the math and figured I could do 28km, and I signed up for 35km. Unsurprisingly, I got a bit behind.

As of last Monday I had four days in which to do 8km. 2km a day isn't too tough, less than an hour of swimming per day so it wouldn't be too hard. I could do it. I was psyched! I was ready to finish the challenge! I was, um, sneezing. And dying of a sore throat. And really wishing I'd gotten a flu shot.

Grrr.

So I missed my goal, ending November with 26,800 metres swum and 8,200 to go. I didn't even hit the 28km I "knew" I could do. I did, however, put in a solid swim effort for the month so I'm thinking all's well that ends well.

I've decided not to sign up for the December swim challenge!

Ch-Ch-Changes

My sister has recently entered the blogosphere and, as is usually the case, she is doing way more interesting things with it than me despite the fact that she's been doing it for far less time. Being related to highly intelligent people can be such a burden.

A lot of the stuff she's doing is quite cool and it inspired to me change up my blog, something I've been meaning to do for ages. (Now I just need someone to inspire me to paint my apartment!) Having been down with the flu all week it sort of makes me feel I'm doing something training related.

It's the same basic set up, with a few minor changes. Let me know what you think!

A Plan is Forming

Posts have been few and far between since Ironman Canada, partly because I'm not doing much tri stuff but mostly because I have no desire to document my life at the moment. And really, the fact that I'm swimming twice a week is lovely but not terribly interesting, especially now that butterfly is no longer an exercise in near drowning.

This dearth of news and lack of interest in reporting is unlikely to change before the new year. I do, however, think that it's worth reporting that I've figured out a goal for next year. Actually, as my last goal took a year to achieve I figured what the heck, why not go for a two year goal. If this keeps up I'll be like the Chinese Communist party and coming up with five year plans, (desperately trying to tie in a pun tying in the Long March and tri training and failing miserably).

To rewind a bit, on the weekend I met with my coach and had a chat about my goals for the coming season. I started out with no real idea of what I want to do next year except have a goal and go faster. Not a lot for Alan to work with there.

After talking things through a bit I decided that I want to see what I can do at the Olympic distance. I'm conservative in most things in my life, racing being no different, so I think it would be cool to push my boundaries and see how hard I can go at the shorter distance.

We started talking about ITU short course Worlds: 2009 in Australia, 2010 in Bulgaria, 2011 in Beijing, etc. Okay, it turns out that 2010 Worlds is actually in Budapest not Bulgaria, but I stopped listening when Alan mentioned Australia so all I remembered were two other destinations starting with B.

While Alan was singing the praises of someplace starting with B, I was thinking that I hadn't seen my good friend Jason in way too long. Worlds would be a pricey trip regardless of whether I went to Australia or some B-place, in fact financially it would be a choice between the two so why not do worlds AND visit my friend in one trip?

So, here's the plan - next year I'm going try to qualify for 2009 ITU Worlds. Triathlon Canada hasn't announced the qualifier races yet so the rest of the planning is up in the air until early 2008.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen, I have a plan!