Training through a common cold is always a gamble because it is a tarsnake that can take you down even longer if you make the wrong choices.
By Christopher Cudworth
Through some very hard-won experience, I consider myself an expert on the common cold.
A cold history
As a committed athlete since elementary school days, and an endurance athlete since middle school, there have been countless encounters with the condition we call the common cold. It is never fun or easy to be sick, especially if you are in deep training or preparing for a big race.
Know your enemy
The most constructive thing you can do to deal with the onset of a common cold is to identify the severity of the cold if you can, from the start. You can do this by learning what forms of potential symptoms indicate the greatest danger, and what you can do to ward off a cold before it actually takes hold.
Wait a minute…
Whether you’re a cyclist or a runner, the first thing to do when encountering symptoms of a cold coming on is to hold off on your training plans for at least a day. You will not lose much in terms of fitness if you use prudence. But you stand to lose tons of time if you stubbornly rush ahead with your training schedule when a cold is in its early stages.
Here are your common cold caution signs:
Any grade of sore throat
Do not continue hard training when you feel any level of tightness in your throat, dryness at the back of your palate or see small “drainage” dots at the back of your mouth. Use a flashlight and peer into the back of your mouth to check for signs of strep, as well, which can manifest as white dots in the red lining of your throat. All these are signs that your body has begun to fight an infection from a virus.
To reiterate, if your throat is tight at any level, you should back off immediately because the body is at a tipping point. The reason your throat is tight is that the mucus membranes of your nose and throat are literally being injured and inflamed in your body’s fight against the virus. That inflammation is both a symptom and a cause of future problems.
Irritability or distracting fatigue
When you’re planning to go out and run or ride and the motivation simply isn’t there, the reason may be you are overtrained.
Fatigue is the reason for the resultant irritability, but the onset of a cold can heighten feelings of fatigue, resulting in impatience with your associates or work, lack of ability to concentrate, even a depressed emotional state can result from being overtired. That is when you are at greatest risk of getting a cold.
Sudden tingling in the nose, and sneezing
The cold virus can also come from nowhere, showing up as a sudden tingling in the sinuses or sudden sneezing. Like all cold symptoms, these issues can be imitated by allergies as well, so it can be difficult to discern, particularly in the summer months, exactly what is happening. Generally allergy sufferers know when their worst points of risk are during a season, and the symptoms are prolonged and consistent, while a cold “comes on” suddenly.
Hunger for sweets or other dietary treats
In the movie Men In Black a giant “bug” from outer space crashes his flying saucer into a rural field, takes over the body of a farmer named Edgar and goes inside the farmhouse to demand that the farmer’s wife to give him a jar of sugar water. She pours a little in a cup and stirs it. The giant bug in the “Edgar suit” grunts and says, “More…” Then he drinks down the sugar water in one big disgusting gulp.
This may be how you feel when a cold is coming on. The common cold makes you hunger for sweet things, but you must resist. Colds, like cancer and other diseases, seem to thrive on foods that provide quick energy. Especially sugar. The common cold is just like the big bug in the Edgar suit. It can take over your body and make you feel thick and stuffed up for days.
Headaches, fever and slow motion
Endurance athletes are at constant risk of getting overtired and sick because we consistently and sometimes radically push our bodies to the limit. Without adequate recovery, our bodies almost seem to seek out reasons to take a break. The common cold is one such method of bodily revenge. First you might feel a headache. Then a sodden feeling from head to toe. Achiness. Then sniffles. Sometimes you develop a raspy voice and a low-grade or intense fever. Your nose starts to run. Your throat thickens and you might even get a case of the runs. Then you know it’s too late. You’ve got a cold. But I still recommend hitting your cold with zinc…
What to do in the early stages
If you are smart enough to pay attention to the “early signs” rather than waiting until everything tips toward a full-blown cold, there are steps you can take to ward off the worst of the effects.
For example, I am an inveterate use of zinc tablets and lozenges. Apparently the chemicals in zinc are effective in combatting the cold virus. That is why it is best to keep zinc or echinacea (some believe it can boost immune systems) in some form around the house at all times during your training seasons.
Most zinc lozenges require that you suck them like a LifeSaver, allowing the zinc to penetrate the mucus membranes and get into your system. All I can tell you is that it works. In the last 15 years or so the use of zinc has warded off countless colds. How do I know that? Because I’ve had far less colds than the previous 15 years before I used zinc treatments like Cold-Eaze or zinc tablets. I’ve learned to use and trust them, and am better off for their preventative benefits.
Hyper about cold prevention
Because I hate colds so much, I am absolutely hyper about fighting them off before they take hold.
This is compounded by the fact that I cannot resort to typical cold treatments like antihistamine-based cold medicines that shrink the sinuses, etc. I learned years ago that these medicines also cause problems with the prostate. It’s all clearly labelled on the bottle, “Do not use if you experience difficulty in urination due to enlargement of the prostate.” Many cold medicines contain this warning. The antihistamines can literally inflame the prostate of men, causing a problem you don’t need to have when you’re already getting sick. For this same reason I never drink caffeine, not in coffee (which I hate anyway) or soda, and don’t miss the stimulant one bit.
And guess what? Ever since I quit taking standard cold medicines, I’ve had far fewer colds and the few that I have experienced are shorter and less intense that when I used sinus medications and other intense treatments for cold symptoms.
Cold medicines don’t cure anything than symptoms
Cold medicines are highly overrated in treating the common cold. They may make you temporarily feel better during the cold or help you get through the workday or sleep through the night. All those things are fine, in small doses. But do not think that cold medicines actually do much to shorten the length of the cold, or do anything especially helpful to cure it. That’s just not true.
It is possible that taking zinc or echinacea during your cold may help shorten its duration, however. That’s worth a try.
Far better to learn the signs of a cold and attack them with preventative measures like zinc, rest, lots of water, Vitamin C, warm showers, hot tea with honey, chicken soup and other measures that don’t slam your sinuses, your prostate or your other tender parts, wherever they may be. (Hi gals).
The tarsnake of the common cold
If you do catch a cold, here’s the typical pattern of what you’ll experience.
- 2-3 days of sore throat, achiness, possible fever, and fatigue
- 3-5 days of nasal congestion and runny nose
- 3-5 days of bronchial congestion and coughing, with possible continued nasal drainage
- 4-5 days of residual coughing, sometimes intense
- 2-3 days of coughing and clearing phlegm
In summary, that’s about 21 days or 3 weeks of dealing with cold symptoms as a median for the common cold. Some colds only last a few days, if your general resistance is up. Others can linger for months, with dry coughing carrying on for weeks and weeks.
So the tarsnake of dealing with the common cold is this: Either you can back off training a few days and fix the cold, or risk losing weeks of quality training because you’re too sick to handle much else.
Catch-22s
The common cold is a tarsnake of decision-making, for sure. Having once raced a half-marathon during the thick throes of a common cold, I do not recommend that approach to anyone. It was 13.1 miles of snot-blowing, coughing and wiping my raw nose with an equally raw wrist. Yet I managed to place in the top 10 with a time of 1:10: 35. To this day I wonder if I’d have gone any faster without being sick. Somewhere along the way I read that the common cold takes away about 10% of your running efficiency, depending on its severity. We all live with such questions, and what to consider a good option when facing the common cold.
Some athletes slug right through the fatigue and illness figuring they’re going to be sick anyway and don’t want to give up the training they feel they need to meet their goals. That approach is brave, for sure, but can also be stupid.
Mother’s knows best?
I once tried to “train through” a wicked cold and wound up with migraine headaches so severe they incapacitated me for days at a time. Then the medicine I took (Tylenol with codeine) to treat the headaches was so strong my whole left arm went numb and I wound up in the emergency room. The technicians there worried about my developing pneumonia as well, so they did a body scan and found what looked like a gas bubble under my left lung. So they told me to take it easy and go home and rest.
That night, not wanting to be left out of the social action, I went dancing with my brothers and some girls we knew at a club called Mother’s on Division Street in Chicago. I opted to drink that cold to death. Strangely enough, it seemed to work.
Baselines
If you haven’t gathered the truth from that anecdote, I was one of those athletes that did not always have good sense about balancing training and rest. At the time of that wicked cold I was running 80-90 miles a week, weighed 14o lbs. on a 6 foot 1 inch frame and got a cold about every three months on schedule. My baseline body makeup was so thin and on the edge it was inevitable that I would get sick now and then. What would I do to change that approach? Likely replace some of the longer junk miles with strength training that could possibly bulk up my system and create a stronger baseline.
Special risks for cyclists and endurance athletes
Riding with a common cold can be especially dangerous for cyclists. The conditions faced by serious riders can range from intense cold to intense heat, both of which place maximum stress on the body. That is why cyclists in events such as the Tour de France are so much at risk for bronchial infections and colds. It’s not that the conditions themselves cause the cold so much as the lowered resistance from stressing the body through extreme conditions makes it much more possible for cold infections and fever to take hold. If you are a cyclist facing down a possible cold, it hardly needs be said that going out and killing yourself on the bike can put you at risk of being out of action for weeks. Better to err on the side of caution and live to train another day.
Rules made to be broken?
I once did a nearly 4-hour training run in 43-degree temperatures and rain. We trotted along at 7:30 to 8:00 pace for more than 26 miles and were never cold, but when I got home that warm shower sure felt good. Then the fatigue hit me and I slept from 2:00 in the afternoon to well past 3:00 in the morning before waking up ravenous for food.
Yet through all that stress I did not get sick or catch a cold. So the rules of training are meant to be broken. You just have to stay wise
Now when I try to share my cold-earned wisdom with my own children, they turn their heads and laugh. What does a fuddy-duddy old dad know about living the night life, after all?
Oh, if they only knew. If they only knew.
If you have a 6 mile run planned, for example, far better to go slow and do 3 at this point, listening to your body the entire way. Or if you are scheduled for a 50-mile ride that you know will press your fitness, it is best to
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