Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Running While Sick?

I skipped my planned 3-mile run today. Well, "skipped" is rather harsh; I prefer to think of it as "postponed" until tomorrow.

The reason I pushed the run back is because I felt kind of under the weather today. I have had a scratchy throat for the past few days, and today I felt lethargic and just kinda out of it. So I decided that a run might do more harm than good: it might push me over the edge of healthy into SICK.

One rule of thumb I've heard says that if your symptoms are in the head -- i.e. stuffy nose, sniffles, sinus congestion -- you can run. If symptoms are in the chest -- chest cough, chest congestion -- you should rest. But my symptoms were in my throat! Where does that count? Should I have run or not?

(The suggestion of Ian -- ever the engineer -- was that since my symptoms were halfway between my head and chest, I should simply run 1.5 miles instead of my planned 3. "It's simple," he said. Gotta love engineers.)

2 comments:

  1. I also advised you to run 1.5 miles.

    But I also firmly believe in REST and that most colds can be prevented from becoming full-blown if you take a few strategic measures during the first few symptoms.

    Get back out there as soon as you can.

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  2. cold-eeze lozenges do me a world of good (as do dayquil and nyquil), but i'm a firm believer in resting on day 2 of an annoying throat tickle.

    that said, my annoying throat tickle from wednesday became a sore throat/lost voice thursday and a go-home-early friday. now it's just an intermittent wet chest cough. yuck.

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