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endurance vs immunity? A case study
Oct. 18th, 2016 10:41 amThere is a study published in the British Journal of Sports medicine (Svendson and colleagues) dealing with high-level Norwegian cross country skiers, the tl;dr point of which is that people who are sick less win more. Most of the article talks about how to stay well. Air travel seems to increase the chance of being infected with something by a lot, and so does competing, or otherwise suddenly increasing training load. So the people who fly directly home from an event are doubly likely to get sick. Also it seems like a number of people don't have enough Vitamin D.
I fly to visit my parents a couple of times a month, (ie two flights within a week, every couple of weeks). The most recent trip was last week, returning on Saturday morning. My father constantly complains of a runny nose, although he doesn't ever mention a sore throat (so it probably isn't a cold, although the doctor said the inside of his nose doesn't look inflamed the way it would be if it were an allergy). My mother did have a cold. On Sunday morning (the day after flying back from a den of contagion), I ran the Baystate Half Marathon in Lowell. Remember that when I say ran for any long distance, I mean run:walk intervals, using the Jeff Galloway method. At any rate, 2:22 finish time, so done at about 10:25 AM. Grabbed and rapidly consumed the post-race food (PBJ sandwich, banana, potato chips, frozen yogurt bar), walked over to the parking garage to meet Arthur, and went home. Snacked again, had a bath, and then suddenly felt exhausted, nose stuffy, maybe slightly feverish. By the evening it was clearly a full-blown cold. I had felt fine in the morning. Was my immune system managing to fight off my mother's (or fellow flyers', or whatever) virus until my whole body had to work to propel me forward for two and a half hours, leaving me hit by the viral load? The timing was pretty amazing - within a couple of hours I went from feeling fine after the race (albeit with a little muscle soreness) to feeling yucky and exhausted. Fortunately, I had been careful to stay hydrated during the race, or it probably would have been worse.
I fly to visit my parents a couple of times a month, (ie two flights within a week, every couple of weeks). The most recent trip was last week, returning on Saturday morning. My father constantly complains of a runny nose, although he doesn't ever mention a sore throat (so it probably isn't a cold, although the doctor said the inside of his nose doesn't look inflamed the way it would be if it were an allergy). My mother did have a cold. On Sunday morning (the day after flying back from a den of contagion), I ran the Baystate Half Marathon in Lowell. Remember that when I say ran for any long distance, I mean run:walk intervals, using the Jeff Galloway method. At any rate, 2:22 finish time, so done at about 10:25 AM. Grabbed and rapidly consumed the post-race food (PBJ sandwich, banana, potato chips, frozen yogurt bar), walked over to the parking garage to meet Arthur, and went home. Snacked again, had a bath, and then suddenly felt exhausted, nose stuffy, maybe slightly feverish. By the evening it was clearly a full-blown cold. I had felt fine in the morning. Was my immune system managing to fight off my mother's (or fellow flyers', or whatever) virus until my whole body had to work to propel me forward for two and a half hours, leaving me hit by the viral load? The timing was pretty amazing - within a couple of hours I went from feeling fine after the race (albeit with a little muscle soreness) to feeling yucky and exhausted. Fortunately, I had been careful to stay hydrated during the race, or it probably would have been worse.
