It's 8:10 pm eastern time, and I leave tomorrow at 4 pm for our regional meet this weekend in Clarion, PA. If anyone can respond to this question before I leave, I'd be truly grateful.
The basic question is this: I have really worked hard this season, and got into the best shape of my peri-geriatric years (I'm 49), but 2 1/2 weeks ago I caught some kind of cold/virus from my 9 year old son, and I feel like I am still at best 65%--still have sore throat, sore body, fatigue, plus cough and congestion.
I'm going to swim in the meet anyhow, but my emergency request for advice is this:
How do you optimize your performance when you're sort of sick? I am more worried about the 1000 and 500 than the shorter stuff (the rest is all 50s and 100s and 1 25.)
Any words of wisdom? Please don't tell me to scratch the meet--if I was feverish, I would probably do so. I'm just looking for ways to make the best of a less than ideal situation, and the swimmers on this forum have provided superlative advice in the past. Thanks in advance.
Parents
Former Member
Jim,
The previous ideas are fine. I think the one mistake you might make is assuming the cold will affect you somehow, and psyching yourself out of swimming well. Relax, and maintain your mental focus.
One brief story, enroute to one meet (when I was 39) I caught a pretty nasty throat cold on the plane, and BTW the meet was several time zones away, so I also had to deal with jet lag. Didn't matter; I swam great for me, except for the shorter events.
During the fast skin swim suit controversy in 2000, one of the Australian swimmers had a great quote. It's appropriate here: "If I'm ready to swim, I could wear a brown paper bag and still do well."
Good Luck,
Matt
Jim,
The previous ideas are fine. I think the one mistake you might make is assuming the cold will affect you somehow, and psyching yourself out of swimming well. Relax, and maintain your mental focus.
One brief story, enroute to one meet (when I was 39) I caught a pretty nasty throat cold on the plane, and BTW the meet was several time zones away, so I also had to deal with jet lag. Didn't matter; I swam great for me, except for the shorter events.
During the fast skin swim suit controversy in 2000, one of the Australian swimmers had a great quote. It's appropriate here: "If I'm ready to swim, I could wear a brown paper bag and still do well."
Good Luck,
Matt
