Anxiety

The mind is a powerful force.

For the past month or so, my training and health has not been 100%. Tonsillitis and more recently infected saddle sores and waking at midnight and not being able to go back to sleep. As a result, my training really suffered and one of the disappointing aspects was not being able to back up after a hard days training to ride again.

Took a trip to the doctor to get the saddle sores checked out and left with the usual antibiotics and steroid cream, but to treat the sleeplessness I was given a referral to a 'horse whisperer'.

Needless to say I was experiencing - unknown to me - anxiety, which results in altered respiration (shallow breathing) the result of which was I was training, sleeping and generally living in a hypoxic state.

Currently at day 4 of the 'program' (regular breathing sets to retrain my brain to breathe properly) and things are fantastic! I'm sleeping well, i've gained another 50watts that were missing from my life and my general mood has improved immensely.

I'm so glad i've fixed this prior to Spain.. should make things much more enjoyable!!!