How quickly it goes, how slowly it comes back

So I haven't been around too much lately over the past couple of months as life has just plain simply gotten in the way of things. After finally recovering from my ITB issues and starting to run more, I got hit with the flu in January or so. This wouldn't have been so bad had it not gone from the flu to bronchitis which put me out for almost a month. In there also I was forced to change jobs and well I finally got back to training a few weeks ago. It is amazing how much better I feel now that I am able to get back out there and just how much happier I am in general.

The thing I did notice is how fast you lose your conditioning! I know I was out of training for about 6 weeks or so but I really didn't think I would lose that much! Used to be able to easily maintain 17-18mph on the bike in the Z2 to Z3 range. Staring out I couldn't even keep in in Z3 and the speeds where really slow. Same thing for the run, at the beginning I couldn't keep my HR in Z2 for anything and I was back to walking a lot just to keep the HR down.

Flash forward a couple of week though and things are improving steadily. My run on Sunday, which was my first brick of the season, was fantastic. Not extremely fast or even close to my old pace, but I didn't have any real issues keeping the HR down except on the hills, but that is to be expected. The bike on Saturday was the longest ride I have ever completed both in time and in distance and it too felt great. It was windy as all get out and I had to fight a lot to keep the bike on the road, but over all it was a great weekend.

My wife said something to me on Saturday night while we where discussing our weekend plans with some friends. I mentioned that on Sunday I had a 30 minute bike ride, followed by a 70 minute run. She chuckled and said "Good luck with that, I struggle to get through my 9 minutes of running 3x3 minutes and walking in between". This really put things into perspective for me. I won't lie that I had been feeling down about the loss of conditioning (even though I expected it) and I was just not happy with having to basically start over again this spring with my training. She has been using the couch to 5k plan to get herself ready to run a 5k later this summer and I see her progressing steadily each week. Her comment though made me realize that the majority of folks are even worse than her, let alone able to run 3, 5, 7 miles at a time. I am not beating myself up so much now and I am just greateful to be able to be out there running, biking and swimming and enjoying it again.