handling with decrease of immune defense

well, first of all: I'm very satisfied with my 3rd place at challenge walchsee :-)

it was a cold day for all of us and I had a progressive race...weak swim, good bike and strong run!

but this time I want to write something abouth what happened to me the last days before the race: coming from a hard training period (hawaii preparation) on tuesday morning I did a high intensity anaerobic running workout, well above my threshold! everything went fine....

tuesday afternoon I felt very tired, even did a nap on 5pm!! and had problems leaving the sofa for an appointment! wednesday morning, after a 8 h sleep, I was terrified looking at the mirror, my eyes had big dark circles and I felt like hit by a tractor (we have a lot around this time, us there is apple picking season....), I did what I had to do, a bike training and a swim afterwards, but struggling more as usual!

thursday was departure day...direction walchsee, which is only a 2,5 h drive! after a good lunch in the afternoon I did 1 loop of the race bike course... at a very slow pace....and in the evening a jog around the lake, which is a 5km loop (we had to do 4 on race day)...and I felt exaggeratedly tired! and...there were still this dark circles around my eyes! I went to bed at 8:30pm and slept till 7:30 friday morning!!!

so, this was a point where I decided to change completely my preparation for the last 2 days prior the race: sleep as much as I can, eat well and a lot (also a lot of good protein) and the most important: increase my daily Biestmilch intake from 900mg to 3 x 900mg a day! I even drank a 125ml solution in less than 12 hours!

so, no training for 2 days (friday and saturday, usually saturday I like to move a little bit in 1 or 2 disciplines..), hoping to recover in time for race day!

well, I started to feel better saturday morning and on sunday morning I felt well :-)

what happend? it's well known, that after high intensity workouts or an accumulation of a lot of training hours, the immune defenses can decrease! it's also well known, that it can take 1-3 days to recover from this situation (which can also turn into real overtraining, if we go on ignoring it...)

I think my experience over more than 10 years into triathlon, did help to keep me clear-headed and acting well right before the race!