The frustration of having a choice: racing with sickness
I just got off the phone with Armin, the US team coach. I could barely let the words out of my mouth. They wanted to stay inside, as if by pausing I could have a little more time to rest or maybe to slip into an alternate reality where my chest is free from congestion. “I don’t think I should race.” It’s hard to even type it out!
Somewhere I’m here in Austria as a 30-year-old athlete still struggling to nod in agreement with the Scandinavian-cross-country-skiers-handbook mandate to not race when your sick (double underlined for early-season races). It’s even tougher when last week I threw the handbook out the window (a figurative toss of a figurative book) and posted three respectable performances in Finland while just coming out of a weeklong cold; of course those efforts weakened me enough to allow the cold to return, or a new one to arrive (which I’ll never know), and here I am for week number three of being Down with the Sickness.
Two days ago I tried to train, in my all-too-frequent denial stage of sickness. This is just the tail end of last week’s cold… I was getting better so this must be the last day… I’ll be totally fine tomorrow. I skied in the morning and joined the boys at the gym for a little strength. After the 20 min core warm-up and a few hurdle hops it absolutely hit me, that uncharacteristic energy-is-drained feeling that tells you you’re circling the… well, drain. I stumbled back to the hotel pissed off. I chastised myself for racing last weekend, then forgave myself because it was maybe worth it? Then said, No! Because clearly it wasn’t, here I am still sick after all, but then well maybe, I mean you got back in the top 20.
Heck. Even after we make tough decisions we sometimes still don’t know if they were the right ones. So I’ll wallow in the liminal space of questioning that decision for another month until it’s far in the rearview mirror and the season has unfolded further. The scenarios are endless; will this added week of sickness put me at risk of losing my hard-fought fitness? Was racing sick such a taxation on my body that it will take a month or maybe more to return to full health? Will the extra week of rest allow me to find some extra inner peace that will elevate my shooting level? Who the heck knows! Just as we prepare for every biathlon starting line amid a nagging uncertainty of the outcome, I’ll walk through the coming weeks with an uncertainty as to whether racing sick was the best thing for me as a biathlete or not. That’s an uncertainty that frustrated Jake had to finally accept as he sulked from the gym back to the hotel feeling drained and, once again, more than just a little sick.
Frustrated Jake was still pretty upset. I knew that I couldn’t keep doing this, I knew I couldn’t keep pushing the envelope on training and racing while I battled this sickness week after week. I had tried; remember last week when the Scandinavian cross-country skiers handbook lay disregarded in the Finland snow four stories below my hotel window. And here I was a full week later, frustrated in Leogang, Austria blowing green monsters out of my head for the third straight week. What a clown. Ok, ok, I thought I learned this lesson years ago. The Scandinavian cross-country skiers handbook was somewhere around, but this time I just had to resort to common sense. Common sense. Who am I kidding. I was driven 85% by emotion, frustration. I’m done with this. I’m sick of being sick. Frustration is the thief of curiosity but sometimes I give into frustration, I’ll admit it. I sent Armin a message. I said (in choice words) that I was resting until I heal. I asked him to hold me to it.
Pre-race day arrived two days later, today, and the green snot still lingered. Armin called and asked, what’s the call? My energy was going in the right direction, but there was no doubt I was still fighting this… “invisible enemy.” Armin gave me the opportunity to make my own decision. I, not he, am ultimately responsible for my racing and results, and that includes a decision to race sick or not. I closed my eyes and sighed. Silence lingered. “Well?” I uttered the words I didn’t want to but knew I should. “I don’t think I should race.”
And I’ll leave you there.
