Commuting - Got a cold

I came down with the flu a week ago and lost almost the whole week riding! It's been downgraded to a remenant head cold, now but I still feel worn out and drained. :sleep:
So what's your advice on riding while you're sick?

I ride. Not hard, but maybe a half hour of light riding. Am not sure about when commuting to work, if you can ride lightly.

I ususally feel better the day after I ride. I feel not great that night but it seems help work some of it out of my system.

Maybe it will work for you.

I've got something like that. It's been going around here. First I had a fever and sore throat,then the runny/stuffed nose deal, and now a nice little cough. I can't ride much due to the fact that BREATHING is needed while riding and it's kinda hard to do that when being sick. Just take some antibiotics and don't ride if you don't feel up to it or you will make it worse.

Originally posted by lin_kieu
So what's your advice on riding while you're sick?
Don't.

Personally I just continue riding and doing every other activity in life as if the illness isn't there. If it's still there on the weekend, I go for a long ride (150km+) and that usually fixes it. I've never encountered any problems doing this.

Ive got post-flu fatigue. It wiped out all my fitness from 2 weeks touring. Im just taking it easy for a week or 2. I still do small rides, but nothing too harsh.

Okay, here's my weird, "Too Busy To Be Sick" theory.

I find that the more busy and active I am, and the more stress I'm under (to a degree) the less likely I am to be sick. I might feel something coming on or have the beginnings of symptoms, but it never seriously takes hold while I'm running around trying to keep up with life. On the contraray, it's when I finish a deadline or a high-stress time, and think "Oh, good, now I can finally relax. I'm going to loaf in front of the TV all day tomorrow" that I wake up the next morning, sick as a dog with whatever my body has been staving off while I was too busy to be sick.

I think forcing yourself to be a bit more active than you want to be sends your body the message that you're too busy to be sick, and your natural defenses and recovery system will work overtime getting you back to normal...

Actually your body is exhausting itself trying to keep you from being sick since it's not easy to fight off an illness and be under stress at the same time. Then when you finally are stress free, your body releases the illness so it can take care of it while you have time to rest and take care of it for good. Well atleast that sounds right :D .

First, if you've got a cold or flu, don't take antibiotics. They don't work on virus-caused diseases, and taking them indescriminately helps build antibiotic resistent bacterium. It's becoming a big problem, and doctors are now actively persuading people not to use antibiotics when they will do no good. My wife is a pharmacist, and has been saying this for years. Once, when I was really plugged up, I asked her for a decongestant. She said it would only treat the symptoms, and not get the disease organism. That process had to run its course with my body defeating it. I promptly asked for a placebo.

About riding with a cold, or after being sick, let your body tell you when you can do it. Some can continue to ride with cold or flu symptoms, but don't overdo it. Exercise can help by increasing the circulation, ridding us of the stuffy feeling, etc. But overdoing it taxes the body's ability to deal with the disease organism itself.

If you feel faint, light-headed, or have other severe symptoms (higher fever, pain, etc.), do seek a doctor's opinion. There are people who mis-diagnose themselves as having a cold when the symptoms were similar to a cold, but were entirely something different. Pneumonia comes to mind, along with other respiratory tract diseases.

John