Running, Cycling, Fitness Tips – The Inadvertent Athlete

Training Sick – 4 steps to recover faster

So, here I am a month away from my biggest event of the year and I get the flu. 4 weeks from now I will run a half marathon through the parks at Disney World on Saturday, then get up the next morning and run twice as far, then walk around the place for another week. Until now, everything was going according to schedule. The training plan was progressing nicely. Then, I had a rough case of something flu-like that knocked me down for a solid week. Here is what I do to minimize the damage.

1. Eat light, eat right – I never can remember the saying about feeding colds or starving fevers so, I just keep it simple. Nothing heavy, very little fat, dense veggies. Super foods like spinach, blueberries, green tea, fruit. Baked chicken, nothing fried. Eat as much as you can handle, you can’t over eat these foods anyway.
2. Stay Hydrated – It’s really important to keep the electrolyte balance when you are sick so, drink water and sports drinks. They can provide some energy if you can’t stomach food. Also, having a fever really puts a strain on your system so, give it the help it needs.
3. Try to do some sort of exercise – Do something to get your heart rate up and blood pumping. Now, by all means, don’t do anything stupid. If you have a high fever, go lie down and go to sleep. If you are fever free, move around some. Run a couple of SLOW miles on the treadmill or spin on a trainer. Try to barely break a sweat. I have found this to be crucial to the recovery process. On the day after long runs, even if I can barely walk, I make myself run a little or hobble. This helps to get blood flowing to injured areas and, coupled with good water intake, helps flush out cellular debris and other byproducts.
4. When you feel OK to train with intensity, take it easy. In my case, I missed 2 critical long runs so, the temptation was to try to make up for the missed sessions. The reality is that if I did try to make it up and cram those miles into the rest of my training plan, I would likely end up over-training and maybe injured. The best thing to do is to pick up where you are in training. If you go back and pick up where you left off, you jeopardize being in peak form for your event. For me, I just picked up with my 18 mile run after my last one of 14 miles. Now that was a pretty big jump in mileage so I ran the 18 miler a little slower than normal to make sure I didn’t overdo it. It ended up being a great run and I feel great about my training plan. Had I gone back and tried to make it up, it would have me running 22 miles the weekend before the race and I would have no time to taper or rest.

If you do it the right way, you can make the illness work for you to make you stronger. Eat correctly to minimize your down time and allow your immune system to fight harder. Do some light exercise to provoke the healing response and help flush out the illness. And maybe most importantly, drink up!