Quick Tip: Your Best Bet is to Not Get Sick as Race Day Approaches

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It’s been a pretty crazy week.

I ended up fighting off a sore throat this week before heading west to speak, sell a few books, and run at the Pocatello Marathon this weekend.

Yes. Dealing with a sore throat the same week that I’m supposed to speak.

And not to mention recording a few podcasts and a webinar as well.

Needless to say, this was not an ideal situation.

But as the week played on, I started to notice that I wasn’t the only runner battling various cases of the crud this week.

A couple of my athletes, as well as a few of my friends on social media, are also battling a bout of sickness at the end of the summer.

Who Gets Sick in the Summer?

To be clear, I’m not one of those people that loses sight of the fact that getting a cold or other illness has absolutely nothing to do with the temperature.

I know that going out in the cold isn’t going to cause you to catch pneumonia any more than going out in the heat and humidity will.

No, what causes any of us to get sick is when we are exposed to a virus that our immune system can’t squash before it takes hold.

And that can happen any time of year.

So the key to preventing yourself from getting sick is to make sure that your immune system is running at tip-top shape as much as possible.

If I’m honest? And with hindsight as my guide?

It’s not a surprise at all that I ended up sick this week.

At Some Point, Something is Going to Give

Remember how I talked about everything being connected last week?

Turns out I overlooked the fact that everything about your health overall is also connected.

You see, when your body is under excess stress everything is effected.

I don’t care if the stress is due to work. Or family. Or running.

To your body, stress is stress.

And one impact of too much stress is a weakened immune system.

So if, for example, you found out you were going to speak at a race in a few weeks, that cranks up the stress just a little bit.

Add to that training for a marathon in only 3 weeks with all of the other day-to-day responsibilities of running a business and other general life stress, and it’s safe to say I may have overloaded the system in the past couple of weeks.

At that point, all it takes is an exposure to a virus…

Perhaps, I should be thanking my lucky stars that this little sickness wasn’t any worse!

Stay Healthy This Race Season

With fall race season coming quickly for many runners, none of us have time to deal with being sick.

The trick to staying healthy, of course, is to manage the amount of stress you are placing on your system so that you can stay healthy in the lead up to your race.

How do you do that? Especially during those higher volume training weeks, when your physical stress is elevated?

That’s a good place to start.

Here are some things that I did in the past couple of weeks that could class me an idiot.

Maybe you can learn from my example?

Get More Sleep

Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time I talk about the value of sleep I could eat like a king in Idaho this weekend!

That said, clearly, I still need to learn to respect the value of a good night sleep a little bit more. And maybe you do too.

When it comes to stress reduction, there are few things easier to do or more effective than getting enough quality sleep.

Sleep is, quite possibly, the best thing that we can do for our health on every front.

When you’re feeling stressed, whether by adding the miles or from something else in your life, increasing your amount of sleep is one of the most important things you can do.

Cut Back Elsewhere

You know I’m a fan of cross training.

And since I’ve upgraded my bike and gotten the Peloton app, I’ve been riding just about every day.

Even though I haven’t tried to kill my bike workouts, in hindsight maybe I would have been well served to cut back on the bike a bit when I was adding so much to my plate with my running volume.

Again, stress is stress. And even though I wasn’t hitting the bike hard, I was still hitting it.

Try to Do Too Much

Part of the stress of these past few weeks has been trying to make sure I have everything locked and loaded so the business side of my life doesn’t go off track while I’m gone for a few days.

That means making sure that podcasts are recorded and scheduled to go out, my athletes are served, and all manner of other tasks are taken care of.

Obviously, I’ll have my phone and iPad while I’m on this trip so I won’t be completely cut off from the world. But the more work that I can have done before leaving DizRuns HQ the better.

So in order to try and get a little bit more done each day, I’ve let myself skip my weekly yoga sessions and many of my daily meditation sessions.

Needless to say, those things are good stress busters.

So skipping them? Maybe not the best idea.

Keep the Diet Game Strong

One area where I did a pretty good job, I think, for the past few weeks was with keeping my diet in check.

I’m not a stress eater, so I didn’t really struggle with eating junk at any point these past few weeks.

But if you turn to sweets when you’re feeling stressed, keep in mind that dumping a bunch of sugar and/or processed foods aren’t going to help you from a stress perspective.

Same thing with hitting the bottle.

If you’re going to have a drink or two here and there, fine. I’m no teetotaler, I promise you that.

But don’t get carried away with alcohol, especially when you’re feeling stressed.

No Guarantees

You can do everything right and still get sick.

That is simply a fact.

But when you’re training for a big race, it just makes sense that you’ll take every precaution possible to prevent yourself from getting too run down and winding up sick.

No doubt that for my next race, I’ll be making sure that I don’t make the same mistakes I made this time.

And, hopefully, that means I won’t’ wind up sick a few days before the race.

Of course, I also won’t be trying to get marathon ready in 3 weeks for my next race.

That might help too…

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If you run youreself ragged training for a race, you may end up sick. And that shit sucks! #runnerproblems #runchat Click To Tweet

Have You Ever Had an Issue Where the Cause of Your Pain Was Nowhere Near the Location of Your Pain?

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