What do you do when you are sick or have a cold?
 

I know this question has probably been asked but a quick search with he word "cold" got me all sorts of winter cycling posts to filter through. Since I am under the weather I and not fully functional too lazy to filter and search better.

At the moment when I am sick, or if its raining too hard, or its winter, I have the luxury of just driving to work. But soon the wife will be signing off on the idea of going down to one car and since I am all jacked up with some kind of virus I wondered what would I have done if we where down to just one car? Yes I live in a city with darn good public transport but personally I despise taking the bus when I am 100% healthy, cant imagine if I had to take it today.

Yes I can work remotely from home, but I only use that for emergencies or if the kid needs to stay home for school, so I don't want to abuse that one.

So what do you guys do when you catch a bug? Do you suck it up and just pedal slower? Do you hitch a ride? or just drive in that day (or week)?

wow, that totally depends on you and your commute. I'd often ride in even if I had a cold. the ride made me feel better. sometimes I was just too sick. I'm willing to bet that if I was too sick to ride to work, I was probably also too sick to be there regardless, but I do physical stuff and my commute is usually 5-10 miles. different strokes for different folks.

For something like a cold, pedal on, for something more feverish, stay home. I've developed headache, fever, whatever at work and just pedaled slower in that case. I've just upgraded to a longer commute so maybe my thoughts will change.

I'm not too proud to drive the car (or arrange other transportation) when I don't feel up to the bike for whatever reason. In the very rare circumstances where other transportation is not available and I can't suck it up to ride, I'm probably too sick for work anyway, so I just call in..

I love the bike, it's one of my favorite things ever, but it's not an affectation for me and I concede that it's not always the most practical solution for my circumstances, and that's A-OK. We don't all have to aspire to be car-light, or car-free. :)

I'd drive the car, but if I didn't have one, I'd stay home. If I am really to sick to bike, people at work really don't need my there or I might get them sick as well.

three things:

1. generally speaking, if i'm too sick to ride, then i'm probably too sick to be spreading my germs around and infecting others at work. that's just not cool to them.

2. if i'm generally healthy, but can't ride or don't feel like it for whatever reason (like -10 windchill on a january morning), i have a super-easy train commute to my office.

3. since i started daily bike commuting 5 years ago, i notice that i get sick FAR less frequently than i did when i was a fat lazy slob. being active, getting fit, braving the 4 season elements of chicago on a daily basis for hours at a time apparently does wonders for one's constitution. i probably still get exposed to cold and flu bugs all the time, but my body's immune system is so fine-tuned these days that i think it just fights them off with little to no issue.

If I feel well enough to be in the office, I ride regardless of how I'm feeling. I'm just never that sick. Once I started feeling pretty nauseous after I got to work (stomach bug was rolling through the family) and I left later that morning to go home. I ended up throwing up in the bushes on the side of the road and then resuming my commute. I was weak and kind of shaky, but I got home ok. I take the approach that sometimes you just have to push your body to see what you can do.

What do i do? nothing.
I haven't had a cold yet thanks to riding during winter i believe.
My half got a cold last winter and spread her germs everywhere contaminating everybody else in the family. Everybody was sick but me even though she coughed on me everyday.
I'm suspecting that riding during winter reinforced my immune system but i have no way to prove it. (To give you an idea I walked with the lightest tshirt i could find at -6C up to 1hr sometimes when most people i saw in the streets were with their heavy coats. So i believe my body got used to the winter because i was cold and sick like everybody else before)

Before that change, being sick usually didn't stop me anyway except when it was a matter of not contaminating other people.

I never seem to get sick either as long as I am riding almost every day.

I had a couple of minor sniffle colds during the winter and would never use that as an excuse to cage up. Colds are actually less bothersome when you're exercising anyway as compared to sitting in a chair inside.

Dont you Have sick Leave available? Dont sneeze on My Food !

Driving in rush hour traffic here is not a luxury - it's an ordeal. Nothing I'd want to do when sick. If I'm too sick to work, I stay home -- no use infecting the healthy people in the office.

+1 on the "use your sick leave"

Differentiate between the cold that leaves you sniffling / stuffy nose / coughing vs something with a fever that makes it hard to do anything (e.g. standing and balancing yourself).

If you're just miserable with sniffling or what not, concentrating on something could take your mind off from it.

But still, I'd get some rest and make the whole thing pass by faster instead.

I put my butt in the jeep seat and drive to work-no shame.

For a minor cold, ride anyway (really clears up the sinuses!).

For anything more serious, I'm calling in sick. I don't want to get my co-workers sick, and I'm not productive when I have a fever.

If I'm too sick to ride, I sure as hell shouldn't go into work where I can make everyone else sick too. I'll work from home or take a sick day.

I don't ride when I'm sick unless it's very minor, the body needs rest so I give it what it needs. As far as work is concern use some common sense. Most jobs are not going to like you missing work for 7 days while you wait for the common cold to dissipate. So go to work. Unless your throwing up, cough like you have a fur ball, or are feverish there is no reason to miss work, just don't ride the bike to work for a week so your body can rest, and don't shake hands with people and keep them washed, take some nasal decongestant pills so you don't sound so bad. I'm not a big fan of nasal decongestant sprays, they can over dry your membranes and cause nose bleeds, and some will actually make your cold last longer due to the dry membranes not getting proper moisture. Also if you start sucking on ColdEz (sp?) lounges at the very first sign of a cold they can shorten the life and severity of the cold, but if you wait more then 24 hours after the first signs don't bother taking them because they won't work.

I haven't had a cold in 7 or 8 years so I'm not an expert on this. I do know the last 2 colds I had I took the ColdEz right away and the colds was done in 4 days instead of the typical 7 and the severity was lower. Unfortunately I can't replay those colds and not take the ColdEz to see if the colds would have been any worse or not without using the stuff, but I kind of lean in the direction it did something just not sure how much.

multi-modal - short bike ride to the MTA lot (3.5 miles) then take the route that gets closest to my office, about a half-mile away.
If I'm too ill to make that ride I'm too ill to be in the office.

I just ride. As others have said, if I'm really too sick to ride 15 kms slowly, I'm way too sick to go to work.

I have found probiotics help your body fight off the cold and flu faster than anything. Plus it helps with weight loss also and sniffling and sneezing is all part of the work I do. I work for the department of agriculture grain inspection im in grain dust daily in grain bins and on the missippi river all the time. So yeah colds the flu are all normal things but I still work even though I got a fever of 103 specially in the middle of harvest and 15 degrees with a north wind of 15 to 20.

rest is an important part of recuperation and healing. balance is key, because a dormant metabolism does little to help. mild activity and spaced out small meals keeps the metabolism from going too low to be helpful. regular activity like cycling helps to boost your immune system, so you will be less likely to get sick. when I bike commuted I was clearly the healthiest person in the office. my colleagues around me would call in sick while I continued cycling through winter strong as an ox. they were baffled. I was not.

Riding with a cold is fine. It can even speed up your recovery. You may not feel like riding, but once you get going, you may realize it's not so bad.

If you have worse than a cold, you shouldn't be going to work anyway.

Cold - ride slowly, I usually feel better for doing so. This happens 3-4 days/year.

Flu - work from home or take sick day. This happens like 1-2 days/year, maybe.

I have an eight mile (one way) commute.
I got some great advice here:

Too sick to ride, too sick to work.

When i drove I used to drag in when I was sick and make everyone miserable with my grumpiness.
Now I have a way to tell if I should stay home.
It works really well fo rme.

As said above, it depends (like most things). A trainer told me once "if you feel bad (from a cold) from the throat up, you can train. From the throat down, better take the day(s) off".

as long as i'm up and about, i ride anyway, try to burn it out.

if i have to debate between driving and biking, i'm sick enough to stay home. :)

What's a cold or a flu ??...haven't had one for a very long time. I think cycling all year round has strengthened my immune system.

I stay home and keep my plague to myself.

Hey that's a great way of looking at it. And come to think of it, I can't remember my last cold or fever! And I'm 52 years old.

CJ, for the past couple of years anyway I just ride in if I'm well enough to be at work. I didn't come to it deliberately. My habit is out the door quickly, 20 minutes from waking up and I'll be halfway there before I realize that maybe I should have stayed home. But, sometimes the ride seems to actually help.

I agree with you about the bus. Even if I didn't mind it at the best of times, there's no telling what you might catch there when your immune system is already hammered.

:thumb: Correct answer.