The first virus of the year (is here)

Tuesday morning: Sore throat. Itchy ear. Slight runny nose.

I'd just finished a massive week of training. Six sessions, 390km. For the coming week I had two four-hour rides scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. Everything still fully on track for Cape Epic.

And then somehow nature always finds a way of messing with you at the worst moment possible. I had planned my week maticiously - Tuesday and Wednesday I had blocked for long, very early morning sessions, to be able to 3.5 hours on the trainer (out of 4h scheduled), and not to disrupt work too much. Then on Thursday I had to travel to Rome, come back Friday night and back to training on Saturday.

Well, that did not happen. At all. Training time this week: ZERO

On Monday evening I already felt my throat being off slightly. I didn't feel bad yet - I actually felt fine. But I figured that this might be a virus sneaking in on me, so I chose sleep over early training and decided to skip the Tuesday morning session. I chose rest.

The crash

By Tuesday evening, the virus had proper settled in. Sore throat worse. Muscle aches. That general feeling of "shitty" that's impossible to quantify but very real. In my mind I moved Wednesday's training to Thursday, cutting in half, hoping maybe after a good night, I'd feel better by then.

But Wednesday was worse. Wednesday night was worse and by Thursday morning I was a proper wreck. Feverish. Properly ill, I canceled the work trip to Italy.

And the frustration really hit.

The mental game

Here's the thing about getting sick during a structured training program: the physical part is straightforward. You're ill, you rest, you recover.

The mental part I found is harder.

We're three months out from Cape Epic and we're chasing specific targets. Every week matters when you're trying to jump from recreational cyclist to competitive stage racer. And for ordinary people with jobs and family, time is just a stiff constraint. Losing training days now, in December, wasn't part of the plan.

I had just completed a big BUILD week, properly building momentum, physically and mentally, and then immediate shutdown. You start calculating. How far behind schedule am I? Can I make this up?

The answer, rationally, is that five or six days won't break an eight-month preparation. But rationality doesn't always win when you're lying in bed feeling miserable and watching your training plan slip away. Not being able to ''harvest'' the efforts of the build week was something I found truly frustrating.

The decisions you make

Today I feel much better. I woke up this morning and already felt ''ok, I'm over the hill''. How bad I felt yesterday, how good I felt today. It's crazy how quickly viruses can come and go. And funny enough, with that feeling settling in, most of the frustration of missing my training, also disappeared quickly.

Looking back, Tuesday's decision to skip training probably saved me two or three days of illness. Resting immediately gave my immune system the capacity it needed. Ignoring it, hoping for the best, and doing a long though session (if possible at all) would have extended everything for sure.

But you don't know that on Monday evening, when you feel still fine and you've got a four-hour ride scheduled. You're making the call based on subtle signals, a scratchy throat, an itch in your ear - that might be nothing or might be the start of something.

The temptation to train through it is real. You've got goals. You've got momentum. You've got a schedule. And you definitely don't have time to be sick.

But training on a suppressed immune system doesn't build fitness. It extends illness and risks bigger problems. Your body can't fight a virus and adapt to training stimulus simultaneously. You're asking it to do two jobs with the energy budget for one.

What Actually Happened

Five days of complete rest. Probably one more easy day before resuming properly.

In the context of an eight-month preparation for an eight-day race, that's manageable. Not ideal. Not what I wanted. But manageable, probably mostly negligible.

The alternative - training through it, extending the illness to two weeks, possibly developing something more serious - would have been genuinely damaging.

JOIN will recalculate the schedule. The fitness isn't gone, it's just paused. And I've learned once again, trusting your gut feeling is always a good idea.

The frustration is real

Losing a week of training three months before your target race I found is very frustrating. Adding to that Jeroen is in top shape, having trained in Spain for a week and hitting serious power numbers on race length simulations. I must admit I am jealous, haha!

But that's part of it. Life happens. Viruses happen. They don't check your training calendar before arriving, nor ask for permission.

The smart play is recognizing when to stop. The hard part is accepting it.

Status: Recovering. Back to training tomorrow. Switzerland in 10 days, Girona in 24 days, Cape Epic in 93 days. The timeline is tight, but still very much in play.

Until then, Keep Chasing!