Training/racing sick

A few nights ago I came home from the pool feeling pretty miserable. Since then I’ve had a nagging cold with a bit of a cough, a lot of congestion and overall feelings of fatigue and weakness. I took one day off, when I was feeling really bad, then I worked out at a very low intensity yesterday. Now I’m thinking I should probably take another day or two off before getting back into any sort of workout.

My questions are:

When should someone stop training because of a cold or some sort of illness?

How much will it effect any sort of race? I have my first race of the season a week from Saturday (just a sprint) and I was getting into decent shape for the race. Even though it’s early in the season, I’d still like to turn out a good race.

Thanks,

Adam

listen to your body, If you can’t hear it use your resting heart rate as an indicator. It’s early in the season, I have been sick lately and taken off numerous days because of it. I have a running race tomorrow morning, I decided to take it easy, run with my wife pushing my child in her stroller. I would love to open up and see what type of shape my running is in but I am scared that it just may prolong my recovery.

IMHO, the best thing you could do is take the next few days off. Some time around the middle of next week your inactivity will cause you to have trouble getting to sleep and your resting HR will drop. The next day, you go work out. If that is one or two days before the race, you will be set to go.

Exercise doesn’t make you stronger. It breaks you down. It is recovery that mades you stronger. Don’t even think about exercising until your body is able to recover. It has its hands full right now.

My suggestion is not to be like my wife. She’ll push herself and usually only make herself worse. I’m the opposite. A missed workout or two isn’t a huge deal and if your performance is a bit down at the race it’s also no big deal. It’s not like tri is paying your bills.

A good rule of thumb is the “neck” rule. Basically, if the illness is centered above the neck, you can still train but keep it easy. Below the neck better to take some rest. Wait until you are completely healed to get back on it, or you’ll end up in this rollercoaster cycle of sick/not-sick.

As far as fitness, I think that is debateable - but generally you start to lose some fitness after about 3 days off, but it doesn’t really get significant until about 2 weeks. The flipside of course is that sometimes the extra rest is a boost - I’ve had a couple of my best races after being put into a “forced” taper from an illness. You never know…take it easy and good luck!

I am going through the same symptoms as you. When this happens I always check my resting heart rate to see where I stand. Typically my RHR is 32-37, this morning it was 53. A week ago according to my training log it was 34. To me it tells me I need to hold off on training until the RHR is a little more typical.

Don’t know if this is of any value but it has served me well for the last few years as way of evaluating timing to resume training.

Good Luck

fal7

I’m assuming from your question that you’re relatively young and haven’t been seriously working out/training for many years. Take it from an old guy and take a few days off. I can tell you from experience that, if you don’t rest, you’ll probably just get sicker and end up having to take off even more time. In fact, you’ll probably do more damage to yourself continuing to train than if you listen to your body and rest.