Monday, July 7, 2014

Stress

Read a good article recently about how a bad day at work can create more stress on your body than an interval workout and too much stress will cause you to blow up.

I was wasted BEFORE I started my last race.  Sick, worn out - even after a nice taper week where of course I caught up on all the work I had fallen behind on during my big training weeks.

I was fine going into the swim and bike, but started to feel it at the end of the bike and when I got off the bike, I cramped up pretty bad.  Dehydration was a big part of it and not getting out of the saddle every once caused limited blood flow to where my ass pressed against the saddle, which is exactly where I cramped up.

But the reality was my head wasn't in the game.  I just couldn't focus.  Fortunately I had a good level of fitness that carried me through a solid bike split, but I totally ran out of energy on the run.

So I am trying to balance things better and consider the whole spectrum of stress that I go through every day.  I'm thinking about a stress score system: each hour under 8 hours of sleep adds 1 to the stress score.  Each unbalanced meal adds 1 to the stress core.  Hard interval session add 2.  Stressful day at work add 2. Add 1 for every beer after the first beer.  You get the idea.

Try to keep the stress score under 5 each day and try to have 1 day a week as less than 2.

Ok, time to get to bed.  Gotta keep that stress score down.

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