I feel wretched.
How much difference a day can make! I took yesterday off and was feeling great. Went to bed – woke up with a sore throat. Felt a little achy too. Guh. This is why committing to a race makes me so nervous: there are always setbacks. And having a goal makes those setbacks seem more dramatic than they really are.
I didn’t feel so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t do work, so I spent the day debating that thorny question – should you run when you feel sick? My coach, Cliff, is of the “better safe than sorry” school. He says he’s seen more than enough runners try to push through illness and fail miserably. Although three days to a week off when symptoms present would do the trick, they run through and end up blowing a month or more because they can’t fully recover. There’s only so much the body can do. If your immune system is compromised and, at the same time, your body has to repair the hammering of workout after workout, you tend to accumulate damage – your body can’t repair it all unless you rest.
So what did I decide? To run, obviously.
15km on the treadmill with Alex, my running buddy (there were 2 treadmills in case you had trouble picturing that scenario). Now, I went easy, nothing more than 8.6 miles/hour (7min/mile or around 4:20/km), but it was a bit of a struggle, mentally and physically.
Nevertheless, here was my penetrating logic: running on the treadmill in my condo building’s tiny workout room tends to raise the temperature of the room quite quickly. As the room temperature soars, my body temperature soars (think hot yoga, here). And isn’t that what your body does naturally when confronted with a virus – it fevers, jacks up the heat to kill the unwanted critters? I figured why not just give my body a hand before it needs to get all fevery? Brilliant.
After the run, I decided to research my little theory – because, of course, the best time to research the pros and cons of a decision are after you’ve made the decision (I learned that somewhere in grad school). Here’s what I found in an article from Runner’s World: "Some people think that they can 'sweat out' a fever by running," says Nieman [a guy who’s actually researched this]. "That's wrong. Running won't help your immune system fight the fever."
(http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-241-286--9082-0,00.html)
Crud.
The article, by Marc Bloom, gives some sage advice about running while sick: “David Nieman, Ph.D., who heads the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State University, and has run 58 marathons and ultras, uses the ‘neck rule.’ Symptoms below the neck (chest cold, bronchial infection, body ache) require time off, while symptoms above the neck (runny nose, stuffiness, sneezing) don't pose a risk to runners continuing workouts.”
My symptoms? Well, the sore throat seems to be in a kind of grey area – it’s neither above nor below the neck; it’s in the darn thing. But feeling achy? Busted. I made the wrong decision.
Oh, and speaking of sore throats, the article has something to say about that too: “How much running can compromise your immune system to the point of making you sick? For average runners, the dividing line seems to be 60 miles a week.” Nieman relates how when he was training up to 90 miles a week, he was constantly getting sore throats, but when he dropped below the 60 mile line, they cleared up. Guess how many miles I’ve been logging on the two “up” weeks of my three-week mileage cycles? You guessed it – 60 or more (around 100km).
Crud... again.
So there it is – evidence on which to base my decisions in the future. So what am I going to do tomorrow morning? See how I feel, of course... and see if I can delude myself into doing the difficult workout Cliff has planned for the group. Can’t miss that!
Perhaps a sore throat is only the beginning of my problems.
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