Recovering

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Sometimes the recovering is harder then the racing. I've been struggling to get my energy back since the Whiskey Off Road and the goof off week hasn't helped. I normally bounce right back after a hard race, ready to rage in a few days. Not this time around. Why? A few solid reasons - but I'm still not happy about it. I want to be riding my bike, not trying to get recovered to ride my bike.

Our trip was crazy and much more stressful then we had anticipated. It was our first trip without the turtle and boy, did we miss it. I don't think we got a good nights sleep the entire trip. The first night, we had a crazy person screaming from 10:00 pm until 3:00 am - slamming doors, hollering obscenities and really scary. I have never been in a situation where I was so worried, and Nick was even more concerned about it. Yikes. And I made the mistake of getting a downstairs room once we got to Prescott. More noise! So horrible sleep the entire trip. We slept our alarms two days in a row when we got home. I was so sleep deprived from everything.

And then the cough. A sore throat developed Tuesday - stayed just a mild sore throat thru to Thursday. I could feel the draining and knew it might be bad. Was sucking on cough drops from Thursday all the way to the crit. Could barely breath after the crit - coughing so hard even the heavy duty drops wouldn't cut it. Surprisingly, I didn't get any worse after the crit - just a mild cough and sore throat. I felt okay, but was worried about the main event. Would I be able to survive without a huge coughing fit? The answer was yes, at least until after the event! I've been coughing ever since, ranging from bright yellow, a light green to now finally clear. I think I've turned the corner here, but the body aches are still hitting occasionally.

So maybe next week, I'll be back to 100% and be ready to start training again. I've got two more big races and I have big goals for those races. Recovery now means better racing later.

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