I’m wondering just how risky (or downright stupid) it is to train when you have a little chest congestion leftover from a cold. This is not hacking phlem cough, just that dry kind with some tightness in the chest. I can’t tell whether I’m just being an overly conservative wimp. But I also don’t want this to drag out for 2 more months. I wish I knew whether this bug will go away on its own whether I train or not, as I have Clearwater in a month. I fear that what I’ve done is repeat a patten of allowing a little recovery, then train enough to halt further or even reverse recovery. I might’ve been smarter to just sit for 2 weeks straight. Then again, it might not have made enough of a difference. If I take more than a couple days here now (which may not be enough to get better anyway), Clearwater is over.
This has been my pattern since early Sept, by week:
SICK - Week off
BETTER (80%) - Train light, sparsely for week
MO’ BETTER (90%) - Train about 60% of normal, w/ some Z4 mid-week
SICK - Week off, doctor visit, antibiotics
BETTER (80%) - Light training, 50% of normal with a day of no activity
CURRENT… Felt better so put in a normal Z2 ride. Still have some cough and chest congestion. Definitely don’t feel “right.”
Yer run down, you dumb cluck, and have made your body viable to opportunistic infections. Do you really need to be told that you should wait until you are fully restored before you repeat this cycle of doom?
BTW, just so you know, I’m saying this in a tongue-in-cheek, humorous vein. I have no idea if you’re a dumb cluck or not!
First let me say I am not a licensed medical professional.
Next, the “old rule” is: above the neck, okay to train, below the neck, lay off until well.
Left over respiratory congestion comes from respiratory infection. Your respiratory system is still trying to rid itself of the last of your illness, even though you may be signifacantly better than when you were “ill” and perhaps even after you have completed your antibiotic regimen, all of it. Obviously, if you are still running a fever, you should not be training. Lay off until you are well or are over your respiratory illness and your lingering symptoms are gone.
Now the “gray” area comes when you are no longer running a fever, but you are still suffering lingering symptoms from your illness. The safest advice is to stay off your bike untill you are over these last respiratory symptoms. From an exercise physiology point of view, these symptoms are like added resistance that you must work harder to overcome to train at your normal level. This means that if you train at your pre-illness level even though you still exhibit symptoms, you are “stressing” your body at an even higher level because you must overcome these symptoms. This “extra stress” on your body actually makes it more difficult to recover fully. Now your body must try to recover from your training session as well as try to get well. You should be able to see why resuming training too soon actually will set you back even further than waiting until you are well and no longer exhibiting symptoms to resume training.
One of the SlowTwitch docs will probably chime in here to set me straight and put you on the right path.
Ordinarily when you try to train when you are suffering from a respiratory illness, you run the risk of making things much worse like contracting paracarditis (inflamation of the heart) myocarditis (inflamation of the lining of the heart cavity) and/or fluid in that cavity that can contribute to congestive heart failure in addition to the illness that you started out with. Don’t forget that your immune system has been compromised by your illness and that training while still ill will further compromise your immune system. This makes it even more difficult to fight off the nasty other stuff that you don’t normally get when you are ill because your immune system wasn’t getting the sh*t kicked out of it by someone training on top of being ill.
If you have to get on your bike, ride easy. No stress. Heart rate zone 1 would be better than heart rate zone 2. If you can’t fight the urge to chase down and pass those novice cyclists that blow by you when you are riding this easy, then stay off your bike. Get well, all the way, first. Then you can think about training again. Think of this time off your bike as a big recovery session. If you can, you will be further ahead when you resume training and have suffered less of a setback than if you started training too soon and needlessly prolonged your recovery.
I think the hard part is discerning exactly what recovered/healthy enough is. I thought I was there before – and I might indeed have been, as my 2nd round may be a different bug. And when you are out of action for 10 days from a cold, yikes, you begin to wonder if you aren’t being overly conservative.
Your pattern is familiar to me. I have dealt with the upper respiratory cycle for a long time. Last year, at the suggestion of a coach, I began a vitamin and supplement regimin that has (knock on wood) kept me healthy for over a year. I am training more consistently than ever before, and staying well so far. By the way, this involves no specific product or brand (generics are fine), so no sales pitch here. If you want to know about it, send me a PM and I’ll let you know what I’m using. I agree, though, that you need to get completely healthy before you run yourself down again. Good luck with feeling better!
By the way, I had a chat with a sports medicine doc at my son’s football game yesterday. He said that he’s read some recent studies to suggest that large quantities of vitimin C in endurance athletes helps to prevent uppper respiratory illness (I guess this has been batted around for a while in medical/sports circles, but the recent studies seem to confirm the positive effects). This helps to confirm my experience, because I take a bunch of vitamin C.
