Its that time of year when everyone gets sick. I recent came down with URI/bronchitis. My understanding is these are viral infections and fevers usually help the body fight viruses.
My questions is does artificially raising the body’s core temperature also help the body fight infection? Even though i feel some fatigue i wonder if spinning w/o fans might actually lessen the time untill i can start training hard again. Since you guys already do so much research on heat adaptation/acclimation and sauna time i was curious if you had any info on this. Thanks. Keep up the good podcast work.
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Don’t do it.
You’ll just get sicker, and take longer to recover. It’s hard to want to take time off the bike but do it. Rest.
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Agree with the poster above. I had a nasty bug hit me late last week in the chest and just today did an easy 1 hour spin outside (felt great, even though I’m about 80-90% back to full repair I’d say). I’m still going to wait until next week before I do anything even remotely resembling harder efforts. I’ll do a couple more easy spins in the next few days to gauge when to ramp it back up.
The 7-8 days off the bike won’t cost you much fitness, but pushing it too early or while sick in the chest can certainly cost you more time off the bike, which will affect your fitness.
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Exactly.
Your body is fighting the virus and trying to keep you alive. Make it exercise or introduce other factors like extra heat and now your body is trying to cope with physical exertion and getting rid of that exogenous heat…in addition to continuing to fight the virus. Don’t split your forces.
When you’re sick, focus on getting healthy.
When you’re healthy, focus on fitness.
When you’re fit, focus on performance.
Get well soon.
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