Watch out the bugs are about!

Now I'm being very careful to try to avoid the bugs and take in plenty of quality food to help my resilience. It's not easy though. I called in at the supermarket on my way home to get lots of colourful fruit and veg, got to the check out and before I could say "acute nasopharyngitis" the woman on the check-out was half way through scanning the items and I noticed her reach for her handkerchief to stop a batch of mucous that was threatening to escape her nasal passage. I looked at her face and was horrified to see that her nose was glowing red, her eyes looked swollen and puffy and she was handling my food, my loyalty card and, what's more - I didn't have the correct change and so unless I was going to forfeit £13.47 she had to pass the money to me. Some people may call me OCD but I came home, washed all the fruit and veg before putting it away and then overdosed on vitamin C! So far, so good. I woke up this morning without a sniffle in sight!

Runners do need to be extra careful though. The serious endurance runner who pushes hard in training can put the immune system under pressure and so the body tends to be more susceptible to picking up bugs and viruses. On the positive side the majority of people who enjoy exercise in moderation, help their  immune system in the following way:

A temporary elevation in body temperature helps to fight bacterial growth.

Exercise can de-stress. It can suppress the release of stress hormones, which are known to make the body more susceptible to invading antigens.

It can help to circulate white blood cells around the body at a faster rate, enhancing the efficacy of the immune response.

All of the above is good but it is important to realise that when you step it up into hard training you can compromise and weaken your immune system. The rise of substances known as catecholamines and glucocorticoids in the blood stream, along with an increase in the stress hormone cortisol can leave the body far more vulnerable to infection, especially in the first 2 or 3 hours after training, leaving a runner more prone to illness than an inactive person. This increased vulnerability is the very reason why marathon runners are often afflicted with colds and upper respiratory tract infections.

The question is - What do you do about running if you do come down with a cold?

Running with a cold can be dangerous and potentially very damaging to your health. A hard or long training session can, but not always, make a cold worse and cause it to move from your nose and into your chest, hampering your preparations even further. Once a cold is resident on your chest and you have a cough, you should take a break from training. Last night I advised our cold ridden runner to wait until he feels well again and then take another day off, just in case.

The general rule for runners as far as colds are concerned is that if the cold is above your throat, ie you have nasal congestion and don't feel you have a fever, then you could go for an easy run. If the cold is in your throat or chest, then don't run at all. There have been a number of cases over the years where people have trained with chesty coughs and colds and the virus embeds itself deeper in the cardiovascular system ending up in the heart. Some of those people have died.

The hard thing for runners, who are well into their training programme, is that they think, by missing sessions they will lose fitness very quickly and put themselves back. They need to step back and see the overall picture. A few days off won't make any difference in the long-term and the runner won't lose any fitness. What they will do is shake off the cold much more quickly than if they keep going and therefore be able to get back to quality training sooner.

So, if those dreaded bugs have got you, put your running shoes away for a week and give your body the chance to fight the infection. It's not fair to expect it to repair itself from the training you've just done and fight the infection at the same time!