On my way. To Spain. There are a lot of questions on this trip. Usually I’ve been training hard for six or seven weeks since USATF XC Nationals and I know roughly what kind of shape I’m in going into the World XC Championships. This year is pretty unknown. It’s not that I haven’t been training hard and trying to get in good workouts. It’s just that I’m now learning that with children life takes unexpected turns that you really can’t control.

About two weeks ago I came down with a cold. It was a bad one for me that lasted about four days. Yeah, I know, that’s not that long but colds for me are two days and done. Then I’m back at it like nothing ever happened.  This one has been different. After four days it cleared up and I felt pretty much back to normal aside from a hacking cough and lots of snot rockets, so I tried to do a workout. 6 X mile at 4:40-4:45 in the park. I made it through 4 of them at 5:00 pace and totally frustrated. It was weird, everything felt normal but I just couldn’t run as fast as I should be able to.  So, I took a few more days and did a couple easy runs, a long run, everything felt normal in those so I tried another workout. I did 400s knowing that breaking a workout up into short segments makes it mentally easier and I just wanted to feel good after this one. It went ok but I was still pretty tired by the last 4 and I was working harder than I really should have been. Whatever, it wasn’t the worst workout in the world.

I had to wait until Friday for that. Two easy days and lots of sinus irrigation later I think I had my worst workout ever. Maybe. I was supposed to do 4 X 2km at race pace and instead it ended up at 3 X 2km at a pace I probably could have run in high school.  Man I was working hard though, lungs felt ok, legs felt ok, everything was ok except I was running about 30sec a mile too slow. So strange.

Sunday I did a little tempo run to confirm what I was afraid of. My pace at my lactate threshold heart rate was 30-45sec a mile slower than it was two weeks ago.

Now obviously you don’t get that out of shape in a matter of two weeks, especially when you’re still training pretty hard. So something is obviously wrong. We ruled out walking pneumonia with a chest x-ray, I’m guessing sinus infection. Now I’m on antibiotics hoping this will do it and I’ll be back to normal in a few days. I’m not worried yet but I will be if workouts continue at their current trend. That’s why I’m not sure what’s going to happen next weekend. Will I be in the mix with the other Americans like my fitness has been indicating, or will I be left behind at the back of the pack. That remains to be seen.

It’ll be a bummer if I can’t clear this thing. I’ve always taken a lot of pride in wearing the Red, White, and Blue and focus on doing all that I can to be ready come race day. Even if I’m not going to win the thing, not even close, I still want to make the best showing that I can. It’ll be tough if I can’t do that.

Up until the cold, probably the flu, I’d been having some of the best workouts I’d ever done so I know the fitness is still there. The question is will it come back in time for me to have a good race.  I sure hope so.

This is part of the joy of having children, you never know what you’re going to get.

I’ll add some pics of the course and talk a little bit about it tomorrow or Friday. Stay tuned.