A brief apology for the lack of posts in the past few days. As this post explains, I’ve been pretty busy.

Somehow on Friday I developed a slight cold. Sore throat, some coughing. Saturday and Sunday was bringing my first ever chance to compete in the Collegiate Cycling Circuit, and I was excited enough to not let a little cold get in my way.

I raced the road race on Saturday, completing a hilly course and 30 miles. The second time up the mile long hill, I was coughing so bad people were giving me funny looks, possibly wondering, “Is she going to die here? Should we call someone?”

Friends suggested that I was making my cold worse by racing so hard. They suggested that racing a criterium (fast race on a short course with lots of turns) was not the smartest thing to do.

I was thinking that exercise would perhaps just force the cold out of my body, make me well faster, even if I was killing my lungs with my coughing. So I raced Saturday and Sunday and spent sunday night and monday morning completely miserable. I’m still getting over my cold, so perhaps my idea didn’t work.

Me coughing during my race this weekend. Credit: J. Kentner
Me coughing during my race this weekend. Credit: J. Kentner
Was I helping or harming myself? According to an article in American Fitness, “New research shows you can put as much effort into a workout when you have a cold as when you are healthy.” However, it warns against exercising if you have a fever.

The problem with exercising with a fever is that you’re raising an already elevated body temperature. As you can imagine, this is not good. One of the the things that can happen is heatstroke.

So exercise if you have a cold, not if you have a fever. But what about it getting rid of my cold? Apparently not. The same article mentions that Thomas G. Weidner, Ph.D says you can’t ’sweat out’ a cold and that the cold will last the same duration as normal.

As I continue to read the article though, I realize that perhaps my friends were right, and I was wrong. If you have a sore throat, it could be a sign of bacterial infection and exercise can make it spread. Not good.

If you’re coughing a lot or have an excess of phlegm, ‘your breathing and lung capacity may be diminished.’  Well, I certainly can attest to that. Any athelete will tell you that. And here I find racing may not have been intelligent… mostly because “this indicates you may have an infection in your airways, and exercise should be avoided.”

However, I seem to be on the mend, but in the future, I think I will take more caution when engaging in hard exercise when not at my healthiest.

For more information, here is the article: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0675/is_n5_v16/ai_21195455