Roots: Grounding your running, mindfulness, health and wellness

ISSUE 4

This one comes to us from one of readers and it’s an important one for this time of year. As your training throughout the winter something inevitable happens… people around you start getting sick, and you yourself might feel something coming on.What are you to do? And what happens if you get sick?There are often a lot of questions surrounding this topic and sometimes there can be a bit of mentality of “if it doesn’t kill you… it makes you stronger” So maybe you should just suck it up and train through it then? Well not necessarily and this is where Issue 4 takes us. 

PREVENTION

As one might expect you best defense against having to deal with being sick while your training is well…. just not to get sick in the first place!There are a few simple things one can do when everyone around you is getting sick and it seems that any day now its bound to be your turn. 

• Wash you hands… now it don’t mean to become obsessive with the purel but just be mindful about washing your hands, for example if you take the bus to work, make sure to wash your hands before sitting down at your desk (you’ll probably end up touching your mouth at some point..)

• Try to get even more sleep than usual. Sleep helps your body fight off anything that you might contract throughout the day. So if you normally get 7 hrs, make an effort to get 7.5 hrs instead! it will make a difference.

• It’s come up a few time before… but making the extra effort to eat an abundance of whole foods and drink lots of fluids (2L + water a day, helps your body filter out harmful germs).

• You can take immune boosting herbs and supplements like cordyceps or macca root. Or for example if your kids are sick, you could start taking Echinacea in an effort to help prevent getting sick.

WELL THAT DIDN’T WORK I’M SICK NOW WHAT?

Sometimes you can feel a sickness coming on. If your lucky and you can catch it early and try to get some extra rest and fluids (and perhaps the above mentioned Echinacea) can help head things off before it gets worse. At this point in time your not quite sure if your sick or not, so its usually advised just to proceed with caution and perhaps back off on the intensity.Nope… you are really sick now what?

SYMPTOMS ARE ABOVE THE NECK

Generally speaking your symptoms are all above the neck, maybe you’ve got a super runny nose etc. Use you judgment, but it’s probably ok to train through this.Things seem to be getting worse? I’m really tired, kind of achy now what?

SYMPTOMS BELOW THE NECK

At this point its really just best to give your body the rest that it needs and try and get better as quickly as possible. Training through your sickness at this point can likely prolong and potentially worsen what’s going on, so in the long term your best bet is just to focus on getting healthy! 

I’M STARTING TO FEEL BETTER…. WHEN CAN I TRAIN AGAIN?

Again it’s a bit of a judgment call here. But its best to proceed with cautious optimism and not to jump right back into an intense workout.Plan to have a feeling out easy run, and plan a route with short loops so you can bail early if your not feeling well during the run. It’s best not to push through the run if you start to feel miserable, so leaving yourself a way to get back home quickly takes the pressure off of finishing the run. Give it a few days of easing back into things before you resume your full training load. Remember you body is probably still fighting something off at this point, or worse your immune system is weaker than usual and you might catch something else if you jump back into training at full speed too soon! 

IN CLOSING

If you do find yourself getting sick, do what you can to help your body fight it off as fast as possible. If your symptoms are below the neck…. then “nobody needs a hero” resting up is your best bet to being able to train at full capacity in the shortest amount of time.So that’s a rap for ISSUE 4. If you enjoyed it please let us know in the comments. Share this with someone you think could find this useful and Subscribe so you can get our next News Letter. Also let us know if there are topics which you would like to see discussed in future issues.