Minor setback

This week, for the first time since my radiation treatments, I was able to squat on Monday and not end up unimaginably sore for the next few days.  I even followed up Monday squats with deadlifts on Tuesday, plus some other work.  But, I noticed Tuesday night that I was struggling with my workout, and I blamed it on lifting heavier on Monday.

In reality, it turns out that I have a head cold - my first in a long time.  I'm not sure why, but for many years of my life, I have been prone to catching colds.  Two winters ago, before I started to feel sick from the liposarcoma tumor, I was amazed to catch a cold in November, December, January, February and March.  Those persistent colds led to a tough ski season.  It just isn't much fun to ski in the cold weather while sick.

In hindsight, I'm sure this was due to the cancer messing with my immune system, but at the time, it was very disturbing.  I've always heard that we catch fewer colds as we get older, mostly due to antibodies that we developed from colds when we were younger.  I can't cite any research on this, so I could be off base here.  But, I seemed to be going the opposite direction at the time.

But, after I started to get sick in April of 2015, and after the 5 colds in 5 months, this suddenly stopped.  I haven't had a cold right now in 20+ months.  So, I'm not going to complain too much about this one.  I would guess that I'm overdue.

Due to the cancer and having mild asthma, I get a flu shot every winter and I make sure to stay up to date on the pneumonia vaccine.  So, I'm sure this is just a head cold that will hopefully run its course in a few days.

Regretfully, that does mean a few days of rest.  I might be able to work out, if I really wanted to, but it wouldn't be fun.  So, I'm just going to wait it out.  If I'm not feeling better by tomorrow afternoon, I will skip skiing this coming weekend.  And hopefully, by Monday, I'll be right back to my normal training schedule.

I have just under 4 weeks until my next CT scan at Sloan Kettering.  If things go as expected, we will set a date for surgery that day, and I'm guessing I'll have surgery by mid-February.  So, my goal right now is to regain as much fitness as possible between now and the surgery.  My fitness has helped me in my recovery from previous surgeries, and going into surgery in good shape means I'm in better shape when I can resume training.

So, I really want to be training regularly right now.  But, I will use some discretion and rest a few days before getting back to my normal schedule.  I don't want to risk prolonging the cold by trying to train hard through it.

Such is life.