Do you have any advice for rebuilding mid season?  I was taken out by sickness for about a month so my fitness is bad. Currently, it is the middle of the season with 2 long races coming up in March and a race program with 2 sprint races a week

Dave, somewhere outside the USA

Ouch. A month is a long time to be off training. As a general rule, you can skip a few workouts without adjusting your training but a month off with illness is a different beast. Keep in mind that your sickness puts you back more than if you just stopped training for a month but were otherwise healthy.

Because you were out so long, you need to go back and rebuild your aerobic base . This will take about 3-5 weeks. This base building period will inevitably overlap with your races. That is OK. You can still race your sprint races if you want but use them as training races/quality training sessions training sessons rather than focus on your performance.

This plan will at least help you get your endurance back for your longer races.

The bottom line is that a month off racing with sickness is something that you need to deal with and it will take time. The best way I have found to deal with this is to go back to base for a few weeks and rebuild slowly. You do not want a releapse of your illness and/or injury because you come back too fast.

Roch