any comments on the ‘fitness cost’ of say, taking the few days as excludive rest and recovery from a head cold? The clod set in this morning, and at this point, it’s still above the neck and it’s my hope not to lose too much fitness or training time during my illness, but not rush back too fast.
Thoughts?
Fever? Don’t exercise. No fever, but muscle aches and pains? If you just HAVE to do something, only light exercise, and I do mean light. I didn’t listen to these basic recommendations and paid for it big-time. A little detraining is much better than progression to pneumonia/bronchitis.
Any more than 2 days off and you begin to lose fitness. If it’s just a cold with no fever try 2 days off and then resume training but take 10 beats off your aerobic maximum number. If you are 2 weeks out you should be tapering anyway so you probably shouldn’t be exceeding the aerobic max. and you won’t be adding fitness just maintaining so taking 10 beats off will keep you moving but not working too hard.
Also hit the vitamin “C” hard (at least 2000 - 3000 mg/day spread out) and echinacea. If you can find it I take a product called Cold-FX and it really seems to work. Not sure where it’s available you can try the website www.cold-fx.com to see if you could find some and start taking it right away.
I thought you started losing fitness after 10 days of inactivity?
In any case, if I were you, I’d take a few days off, consider it part of your taper. If you continue to exercise, you run the risk of getting worse.
This is the probably the best thing that could have happened to you. Take a week off. Forced taper. Then a few very easy, very short days. Then a little bit of volume and a few minutes of hard effort. You will be good to go.
You won’t lose any fitness unless you try to wear yourself down while you are sick. Then you will have a problem.
Show up at the starting line healthy and well rested. You will be way ahead of most.
there was a thread on this recently, you are not losing anything after two days off but inside your head. Performance will start to decline after roughly a week and have big declines at 2 weeks. I left a more detailed answer here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=137390;search_string=time%20off;#137390
The 2 days comes from my coach as well as the reduced HR work as aerobic activity strengthens your immune system. I would feel flat taking a whole week off in the 2 weeks before a race and would rather be doing something light. I agree that the work should be super easy to avoid making the cold any worse and running yourself down. If I take 10 beats off of my aerobic max number I am only going at 120-125 on the bike, to be safe you could take another 5 off and go at 115. At this HR you won’t be going very hard at all just moving your legs. In the end it really boils down to what your body is telling you feels OK but IMHO some short duration light activity is more beneficial than doing nothing for a week??