Training when you are sick will make you sicker

Is it me or is there more sickness around in the early part of 2016 than in previous years? It has been a bad winter for me; I’ve been sick about every month. People I train with have also been getting sick.  Most, including me, are experiencing respiratory infections or flu symptoms. It has been a nasty winter so far.

The problem is, the long hard hours of training required for cycling and triathlon suppress your immune system, leaving you susceptible to opportunistic infections. Getting sick and missing two weeks of training due to an illness is shit. It can setback your goals and give your motivation a hammering. Triathletes need strategies to prevent sickness as well as to manage sickness when they are unlucky enough to get sick. They also need comeback strategies for returning to training without getting sick again. I went back to training and racing too quickly after a respiratory infection in 2015 and I just got another infection, this time worse, and ended up out for six weeks. Don’t do it. Let your body recover before returning.

You will always be exposed to infections. If you have kids in crèche or schools, you will most likely be exposed to everything. Minimising the risk of contracting an infection is the aim. Hard training sessions suppress your immune system for up to three days. This period of impaired immunity is known as the “open window.” Being hyper-vigilant with prevention techniques during this “open window” period is advised. In other words, avoid going to places full of people, such as shopping centres and cinemas, after a long hard ride. If you don’t have kids, stay away from them. If you do have kids, hard luck.

What can you do to try to prevent illness?

- Focus on recovery after training to minimize exercise-induced immune suppression. Take it easy: rest.   
- Eat well to keep up your general health and maintain vitamin and mineral stores, particularly Vitamin D.
- Avoid crash diets and rapid weight loss. 
- Avoid over-training and chronic fatigue with a careful, progressive training plan.
- Minimize contact with sick people, especially during your “open window”. Minimize time spent in public places with large crowds, especially during your “open window”. 
- Keep a distance from people, especially children, coughing and sneezing.
-  Wash your hands before eating or after contact with sick people, public places and bathrooms.
- Carry hand sanitizer to use when hand washing is inconvenient. 
- Avoid touching your mouth, nose and eyes with your hands. 
- Use clean, disposable tissues to wipe your mouth or blow your nose, and put soiled tissues in the bin immediately. 
- Do not share food or drink with anybody, especially children. 
- Use a face mask to protect your respiratory membranes from being directly exposed to very cold and dry air during strenuous exercise. This can be hard as the mask will get damp/wet and can cause cycling glasses to steam up. 
- Wear appropriate clothing to avoid getting overly cold and wet. 
- Consistently get at least seven hours of sleep per night. 
- Keep life stress to a minimum. 
- Bonking during training is bad news for your immune system. Ensuring adequate carbohydrate fueling during and after heavy or prolonged exertion helps dampen immune inflammatory responses and counteract exercise-induced immune dysfunction.
- Use plenty of carbs in training. Better to put on a few grams in weight than to get sick.

Bugs are out there and, even if you follow these suggestions (and refuse all contact with children), you may still fall sick. Triathlets think they are hard and will try to train through almost any illness rather than rest and fail to get in their weekly mileage. That is a bad idea. Training through a viral infection can be seriously bad. You do not want mononucleosis, pneumonia, or myocarditis, an infection of the heart caused by common cold viruses. It is better to stop for a few days rather than let your common cold turn into a significant illness. You can’t build fitness on a sick body.

Just how sick do you have to be before holding off on training becomes the correct decision? Any illness symptoms are reason enough to avoid training hard. I tend to do recovery-paced training sessions, keeping heart rate low, if all symptoms are above the neck. These include a mild sore throat, stuffy nose and headaches. Light exercise may be helpful in this instance.

Stop training and take a day off from all activity other than gentle stretching if you have any below-the-neck symptoms. These include a very sore throat, fever, fluid in your lungs, coughing, body chills and aches, exhaustion, diarrhoea or vomiting.

While you are sick, rest, drink plenty of hot fluids, and seek comfort from over-the-counter cold remedies. The vast majority of colds derive from a virus, so taking antibiotics is rarely helpful. Antibiotics will weaken your immune system further by destroying bacteria—both good and bad—in your gut, where a portion of your immune system resides. If your illness symptoms deteriorate rapidly or continue for more than three days, consult your physician.

Here’s what I’d tend to do before returning to training:

- Wait one day after below-the-neck symptoms have resolved before resuming any training.

- After that, resume training with a day consisting of one recovery-paced session.

- Continue training at a recovery pace until all above-the-neck symptoms disappear.

- Stop training and return to rest if any below-the-neck symptoms return.

- If you were sick for three days or less, resume your training plan after your one “wait day” plus one recovery day.

- If you were sick for more than three days, resume training with one “wait day” and two or more recovery days. After two or more successful recovery days, gradually ramp up your duration first, then intensity, to full training loads over the course of four to seven days.

So there you have it. Avoid the bugs at all costs, rest when you do get sick, and come back to full training gradually. It seems simple doesn’t it? But is can be very hard to slow down or to stop training altogether – even when you badly need to so your body can have a chance to recover. Look after yourself out there.