
There was snow this morning.
First snow of the season. No accumulation. Just a taste. A promise of what’s to come. And a reminder of how slowly my fall is going.
I’m way behind compared to previous years. The marathon training took a bigger toll than I had realized. I got a virus in early October. Knocked me on my ass for a few days with body aches and exhaustion. I didn’t shake the fatigue until just last week.
I’ve had some non-exercise related stress, too. A lot, actually. I’m told that it is the primary contributor to my feelings of poor health.
Blood tests were negative. But my morning heart rate was still 5-10 beats above normal. Maybe I wasn’t sleeping enough? So I started sleeping more hours. Maybe I was drinking too much coffee? So I drank less. Maybe I wasn’t training hard enough? So I trained more. Maybe I was training too hard…?
In the past, I’ve been able to rely on exercise as a way to clear that stress. It’s not working so well right now. Poor sleep. Low energy. The difficulty of squeezing in workouts with dwindling daylight. It all prevents me from using my go-to panacea. Or maybe I just need to rest…
Or maybe bigger problems require harder workouts?