Coming back from the flu
How much? How quickly?
This time of year people are in the midst of training campaigns for spring races. For some of the advanced or intermediate plans you may be 8-10 weeks in by this point in the year (mid-January).
This time of year also exposes people to the cold and flu season. Piled on top of all the other challenges people have in the dark months of winter is the chance of getting sick. The Holidays (besides being a joyous time of year for families to get together) also present lots of opportunities to spreads plagues, not get enough sleep and make poor nutritional choices.
You may end up sick. I tend to not get sick if I’m training consistently. I’ll get some mild cold symptoms every now and then but they seem to come and go quickly and never really impact my training or travel.
Before I started training consistently I used to get sick like clockwork around the changing seasons. Every fall and spring I’d come down with horrendous head colds that would take me out with a two-week coughing and suffering binge.
When I started running consistently it stopped happening. Something to do with a stronger immune system? I don’t know. I’ll take it, but I don’t know. I don’t get sick and when I do it’s mild and passes in a couple nights.
The best way to recover from a flu then is to not get it in the first place. The best way to do that this time of year is to pay attention and not let yourself get run down. I don’t know about you but I need to sleep more in the winter when the days get short.
If you have a training schedule that is ramping up during the winter months try to be proactive. Plan to get enough sleep. Your body is already stressed. Give it some extra help. Don’t let yourself get run down.
Nutrition is important to health as well. Again in the winter we tend to get less fresh vegetables and fruits. Try to proactively have those 4-5 pieces of real whole fruit every day. The good news is that the citrus harvest is starting to come in this time of year.
Make sure you’re getting a good mix of leafy green vegetables. Big warm vats of chili are lovely on a cold Sunday afternoon but try to keep your healthy diet on an even keel. It’s about what you eat as much or more than what you don’t eat.
What if you get sick anyhow? What if you have to stop your training for a week or two while you lie moaning and sweating and wishing you were dead? How do you come back from that?
This is a great question. Getting sick is different than getting injured. With an injury you may have to take time off but your body is not getting a beating like it is when you’re sick.
I always tell people to build a couple weeks of slack into a training plan when backwards scheduling from a target race. That gives you some time if ‘life’ happens you can still execute your training plan for the race.
If you don’t have that buffer you have to figure out what to do next. If you’re sick for 2 weeks you don’t just lose 2 weeks. You lose the 2 weeks of training and whatever time it takes for you to recover back to the level of health and fitness you were at before you got sick.
You’re not going to be able to jump out of bed after a week or two and start where you left off. You’re going to have to ease back into training. If you do jump right back in where you left off you’ll either get injured, over-trained or sicker.
What’s the magic formula? How do you ease back into it?
Depending on how sick you were some people use the rule of thumb that you need 3 days of recovery for every day that you were sick. I think it’s simpler than that. I think you just have to start back into your training plan at 40-60% of the volume you were doing pre-sickness and see how you feel.
Some of these flus will really beat the crap out of your body. You may be so weak that it will take weeks just to get back to feeling normal. On the other hand you may bounce right back. It really depends on you and your machine and how it responds.
Take that first week easy. No big speed or tempo runs. Do your base miles easy and start with 40-60% of the volume. That may translate to skipping days to recover or running 50% of the distance you normally would.
The biggest question people usually have is what to do about the long run? You may have worked up to a good distance on your long run. The plan may have you doing something longer. This is where I would drop back to 50-60% of the distance for a couple weeks.
The key here is to take note of how you feel in these first couple weeks. Ignore the first couple workouts because they are going to feel weird and sucky no matter what – throw those data points out. Notice how you feel the next day. Notice how you recover. Notice your energy level on subsequent runs.
This will give you the information, the feedback, the data to know where you are and how you should approach the rest of your cycle.
If you had a training cycle that was scheduled to take you to your race without any slack you need to make adjustments in your expectations. Maybe you come up with a plan B on pacing and goal time. Maybe even skip the event or downgrade to a shorter distance. As much as you’d like to race, if you get sick and miss a big chunk of quality training in your cycle you have to deal realistically with your ability race.
No one likes to get sick. No one likes to miss training when they have a race on the calendar.
Do what you can to stay healthy and avoid getting sick. Ease back into your training and evaluate what you lost and what you have. Reset your schedule and expectations appropriately. Try to learn from it and live to fight another day.