Running through Illness: A Cautionary Tale

The most frustrating part of running is being sidelined by either injury or illness. These twin terrors have caused many a runner to miss an important race or to seriously hamper their preparation. I give you my own recent experience as an example.

I have a very ambitious target. I want to finish in the top ten in Ireland’s longest race (and only ultra), the stunningly beautiful 39.3 mile Connemara Ultra in April. To achieve this goal, a lot of training will be required and, in the beginning, all went well. When I got a slight cough in the middle of December, it didn’t really faze me.

My advice to anyone with a cold is always the same: run if the symptoms are all above the neck, otherwise stay at home. This is an important rule that you should always heed, but unfortunately it is very much a case of do as I say, not as I do. Despite having a chesty cough, I continued with my single-minded, obsessive training regime. It might sound rather obvious now, but running with a chest infection in the middle of a wet winter is not the best idea. By the end of December, I felt bad enough to visit a doctor. She diagnosed a severe lung infection and prescribed some antibiotics and rest. The medicine seemed to help and, after a few days, I was back on the road again.

It is important to know when to make your comeback after a lay-off. In my case, I got it spectacularly wrong. Within 4 days I had a very high fever, felt absolutely awful and the left side of my chest hurt so much I thought I had cracked a rib from all the coughing. When I managed to get to a hospital for a chest x-ray, the prognosis was confirmed as pneumonia. I have since had three weeks of complete rest, and have only recently been allowed to resume running, but only easy running at short distances. It’s not exactly what I had in mind to prepare for an ultra.

Most bouts of illness are less severe than mine, but you can learn from this lesson anyway. A few days off in December, when my cough first developed, would most likely have cured the problem there and then and I would be happily doing high mileage weeks now. Instead I’m uncertain if I will even make the start line of my race, never mind the finish. Training hard is usually good, but training smart would have been a lot better.