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It happens to all of us at some point in the season. Things are going well - you're on top of your form and riding strong - but then it starts: scratchy throat, stuffy nose, itchy eyes. That's it, you're sick! Many riders make the mistake of overtraining (or underresting), leaving themselves vulnerable in the first place, and then those riders don't give themselves enough time to fully recover from the illness, for fear of losing fitness. Both approaches are recipes for an early end to your season. In this article, I'll detail how to prevent getting run down and susceptible to illness, and how to rescue your season when the illness happens
If you're getting sick and tired of being sick and tired, the first step is to pin down why. A heavy workload both on and off the bike without ample recovery puts more stress on your immune system than your body can handle. A weakened immune system means your defenses are down, leaving you open to illness. Ideally, you should be keeping a training log where you not only record the hard data of your workouts, but also information about your waking pulse, sleeping hours, how you felt on your ride, how your day at work went, and how you recovered from the previous days workout. This is where small observations you make about your day can speak volumes later when viewed in the larger context of your training week and overall health.
Recognizing overtraining by reading your training diary can actually be pretty simple. There are some general rules you should try not to break to stay on top of your form, rules that are easy to apply within the context of your training diary. One rule is to never hard train more than three days in a row without taking a very easy recovery day. Another rule is not to include more than 2-3 days of anaerobic training in a single week, including racing. Purely aerobic training often takes only 24 hours for recovery, but anaerobic work can take 48 hours or more. Don't be afraid to take as many recovery days as you need after a weekend of racing; training tired is definitely a shortcut to illness.
What's harder to pinpoint is the non-cycling stress that contributes to overtraining. Training stress is a good thing; it's the trial for your body to force an adaptation and, in short, to get faster. Non-training stress can be equally hard on your body and requires recovery time. However, it's the kind of stress that many riders neglect to consider. A difficult day at work, difficulties with a personal relationship, or a day spent traveling to or from an event, are all the kind of strains on your body that need to be considered. An all-day drive home the day after a race is not a recovery day - you need to recover from the drive itself. Being slightly undertrained and underfit, but fresh and healthy, is a more effective approach than overtrained, fit, sick and tired.
If the damage is done and you do find yourself sick, it's important to limit your losses and not make things worse. The biggest mistake a rider can make is to try and train through sickness to keep from losing form. The small amount of form you might gain from the training is never worth the extra days you'll stay sick from splitting your body's energy between recovery from the training and recovery from the illness.
Normally, I recommend that clients take at least one to two days off the bike once a serious cold or similar illness sets in. It's much more effective to spend that time napping, especially if you're still going to work during the day. Once their illness has stabilized and isn't getting worse, I'll allow them to begin to ride a hour easy each day, mostly as a way to check in with their bodies and see how they're progressing. The first day that they wake up feeling better, and get in one of those hour rides that leave them thinking they could have trained, I'll allow real, structured training to begin the following day. Not the day they feel good, but the day after, since riders are rarely honest with themselves about how much recovery they actually need, and are usually too anxious to get going again.
When you do start again with structured workouts, it's important to start at a level below where you were before you got sick. Trying to pick up where you left off is typically more stress than your body can handle, and might leave you sick once again. Building back up slowly is the most effective approach. Once you do get back into your routine, you might find that you feel surprisingly good; often if you've fully recovered from your illness your immune system is in overdrive, and your training will go well.
Adam Hodges Myerson is a cycling coach, race promoter, team manager, and USCF category 1 racer. His company is called Cycle-Smart, and he can be reached at adam@cycle-smart.com. He lives in Northampton, Mass. with his wife, Allison, and their two cats Birdie and Marie.