4 Days into a 7 day (500mg twice daily) Cipro treatment. Treatment was prescribed after I went to the doctor for blood in my urine and reduced flow/pain during urination (along with chills/fever). Initial diagnosis was UTI, Kidney stones, or prostatitis. Blood and pain have now stopped and flow seems normal (so I’m thinking it’s UTI, but that’s not really my question).
I had a marathon planned for tomorrow. At the diagnosis, the Doctor said I shouldn’t be doing the marathon. I try to make it a habit to listen to a doctor, but it was a walk-in clinic so I’d never met him before and figured I would get the conservative answer.
Other than the headache and dizziness that I have, which I’m assuming comes from the stated side-effects of Cipro I’m feeling ok and would consider giving the run a go if I feel ok tomorrow.
But I also read on Cipro that “People taking Cipro have been known to suffer torn tendons.”
I’m trying to make a call on whether I should just forget about the race tomorrow, so I’m interested in any qualified opinions on:
i) any danger I’m putting myself into if it’s not just a UTI?
ii) how I should regard the tendon precaution.
Obviously there will be other marathons that I know I can do, but if I were to race tomorrow and be smart about listening to my body is this something that I will have some fore-warning on? I’d rather give it a shot and have to shut it down, than to not try at all.
Dizzeness??? headache’s??? call your race fee a donation if they do not let you do it next year instead and LIVE to race another day. Listen to all precautions. Wait till you are off the medication to start training again
Thanks for response (which does provide a bit more forceful version of the warning I had read and the achilles is definitely marathon relevant).
One of the reasons I posted was because I had started with a Slowtwitch search on Cipro. There were a number of occasions where people had done endurance events (IMs, 1/2IMs) while on Cipro, and I couldn’t find any mention of potential health implications from some seemingly medically-based posts.
i had prostatitis for 6 months and during that time couldn’t ride my bike. doctor’s tried cipro, vioxx and every other drug they could think of. none of which worked.
i was training for imusa during this time and was pretty certain that i wouldn’t be able to race. for 3 months, if i sat on my bike, i would get a stomache ache and have to pee. at night, i’d be up 6-10x having to pee. i could run and swim thank god during this time. finally in desperation to save my season (oh and find a cure) i went to this lady who practices oriental medicine whatever the hell that is. she looked me over and gave me some pills in an unmarked container out of her “pharmacy” that i still to this day have no idea what they were. next day i was back on my bike. true story. 7 years later, i’ve never had another problem.
so to answer your question, i ran and swam while on cipro and never had a problem. that doesn’t mean you won’t but i didn’t.