Listening to my coach, taking more time off

I have an admission to make.  I lied in my last blog post.

I finished that blog post off by announcing, with some bravado, that I was going for a run.  Right after finishing it, a new email came in, from Angie, my coach.  Right before blogging, I had sent Angie a quick email explaining that it had been a rough week and I'd been sick for most of it.  "I need help figuring out where to go from here", I told her.  "I'm going out for an easy run, but what next?"  Then I proceeded to throw up that quick pre-run blog post.

She didn't email me back quite quickly enough to beat my blog post going up, but almost immediately afterwards it came in.  It was very short.  "Can you call me. Now?"

She didn't leave much room for negotiation.  No run.  "Listen to your voice," she told me.  "Is it in your head or your chest?"

"Yeah, I guess it's still kind of in my chest," I admitted.  If I was ready to be honest with myself at that point, I'd probably have admitted that it was very much lodged in my chest and in addition to that scratchy voice Angie heard, I was wheezy and walking across the room left me winded.

The message that came across in the conversation was that now is not the time to push myself.  My fitness was not going to evaporate in a puff of smoke.  Pushing through this was just going to make it last longer.

This was hard for me to accept.

I'm pretty good about taking rest when I'm good and truly sick.  What I'm not good at continuing to take rest when I'm starting to feel better - but still sick.  Part of it is that fear of letting the old me sneak back in.  The fear that if I stop training, I'll stop wanting to train.  No excuses, right?  But, there's excuses, and there's reasons.

I chose Angie as a coach because not only because her style clicked with me, but because I felt she had the education and experience to know what she is doing.  So, when it comes down to it, I'm going to listen to her.  Even when she doesn't tell me what I think I want to hear.

So, two more days off training.  Today, I'm really feeling better.  Not just in comparison to barely moving out of bed.  I'm actually feeling relatively good.  I'm still not going for a run though.  I'll be doing a spin, on the trainer, so that it's controlled.  Because my coach told me to and I'm listening to my coach.

These girls have to wait a little longer