Feel your pain Thomas. Whilst not an athlete at your level (and certainly not racing for my livelihood), I was hit pretty hard with mono a couple of years back when my running was at its best ever, and I feel like I lost something that I've never since gained back.
Part of the impact with my infection was impaired liver function and really reduced hemoglobin.. my hematocrit went from that of a (fairly) competitive AGer to an untrained smoking pensioner overnight. I don't really have the science or the language to accurately describe what has happened, but I wonder if my hematocrit didn't ever recover post-illness back to where it was 6 weeks before when I was fit, and it sort of feels like I lost my "aerobic base" and now need to re-earn it, if that makes any sense. I've had breaks of a similar duration before for one reason or another, but when you've enough years of training in the bank you always feel like you have a baseline of aerobic ability to come back to. This felt very different for me.
I am quite sure that I brought on the infection by letting my defences down through overtraining/under-resting, as I was carrying on in spite of illness and very little sleep (young kids). Years of aerobic training washed down the shitter because I was too pigheaded to miss a few sessions. Still nowhere near where I was 2 years down the line, not even close.
Epstein-Barr is a dickhead... but I am potentially a bigger dickhead :-).
Back to the original topic, I also find it hard to look past Chrissie as a surprise winner.... bearing in mind nobody knew then what we all know now. But as we found out, it certainly wasn't just one great day.
Part of the impact with my infection was impaired liver function and really reduced hemoglobin.. my hematocrit went from that of a (fairly) competitive AGer to an untrained smoking pensioner overnight. I don't really have the science or the language to accurately describe what has happened, but I wonder if my hematocrit didn't ever recover post-illness back to where it was 6 weeks before when I was fit, and it sort of feels like I lost my "aerobic base" and now need to re-earn it, if that makes any sense. I've had breaks of a similar duration before for one reason or another, but when you've enough years of training in the bank you always feel like you have a baseline of aerobic ability to come back to. This felt very different for me.
I am quite sure that I brought on the infection by letting my defences down through overtraining/under-resting, as I was carrying on in spite of illness and very little sleep (young kids). Years of aerobic training washed down the shitter because I was too pigheaded to miss a few sessions. Still nowhere near where I was 2 years down the line, not even close.
Epstein-Barr is a dickhead... but I am potentially a bigger dickhead :-).
Back to the original topic, I also find it hard to look past Chrissie as a surprise winner.... bearing in mind nobody knew then what we all know now. But as we found out, it certainly wasn't just one great day.