Tuesday:  I planned to get up at 5:15AM to go rowing.  I did get up at 5:15.  Went to the bathroom and felt so awful that I went back to bed.  I didn’t feel really sick, just a bit shakey and very, very tired.  I slept until about 7, and then showered and went to work.  No training.

Wednesday:  I put out all my rowing clothes and I went to bed at a reasonable hour, but when the alarm went off at 5:15, I just turned it off, rolled over and slept until 8AM.  I drove to work and since I didn’t have anything on my schedule until 11, I went to the gym and did an easy 10K.  Mostly as a diagnostic test to see if I was really “off”.  My typical endurance training power is around 180W (2:05 pace) these days, so I just set out to flat pace the 10K and watch what my HR did.  If I was coming down with something, I figured that my HR would rise abnormally fast.  If not, that I just dug myself into a deep hole with my festival of mulching on Saturday that I had to recover from.

The verdict is inadequate recovery.

The heart rate was a little high, but not unusually so.  I would have had to slow down if I was continuing for another 40 minutes.

So, what does it all mean?  I’ve never had good instincts for listening to my body.  And by most metrics, my training load is very light.  I’m doing way fewer meters than I did a couple of years ago.  But, there are two things that are different.  First, I am traveling a lot more and I think that the travel is causing a serious chronic level of fatigue.  The other is (I hate to even write it down because it feels like a cop out) that I am getting older.  I’m 54 now, and I don’t feel like I am recovering as quickly as I did a couple of years ago.

This brings up all kinds of complicated thoughts.  Will I ever see another sub-6:40 2K?  Will I ever do better than middle of the pack at HOCR?  Does that stuff matter?

I think it’s time to dust off my Principles and see if they still fit.

As I write this, I am, once again, flying to California.  I will spend Thursday in San Diego and take the red eye home.  Ah, the injustice of needing to make a living.

Tomorrow morning I am planning to bop over the Del Mar Crossfit and do the OTW session I was supposed to do today on the erg.

Edit:  I did a bit of research on my travel.  We are in the 18th week of 2017.  Over that period, I have been traveling in 12 of those weeks.  I have made 3 trips to asia, and 6 other trips.  Almost all of them included at least one overnight flight.  This has made me feel a bit better about the fatigue I’m feeling.  I think I’ve earned it.