was wondering if those of you 'in the know' could give me a bit of health advice. Had a weird day today - at about 10am I suddenly started burning up and had a horrible fever for the whole day (hot & shivers, aching joints, headache, nausea, etc). Unfortunately I was on a training course so I couldn't leave early. I got home about 3 hours ago - had a cold relief drink and ibuprofen, slept off and on for a few hours and had some food (think I sweat some of it out). I feel much better now but that's maybe the meds. I'm going to have a really early night tonight and try to sleep it off.
Tonight was supposed to be a run night but there was no way could I make it. Would I be okay to go tomorrow do you think? (Depending on how I am feeling). Should be circuit training (weights), maybe a short swim and then a good run tomorrow. However I am having flashbacks to my old kickboxing instructor telling me if I had a fever my body was under too much stress to cope with extreme physical activity.
I am certainly not a medical professional, so please take what I say with a grain of salt!
If I were in your situation, I would base everything on how I felt tomorrow. You knew your body well enough to know that you couldn't make the run tonight; you should be able to tell if all that moving around is going to be too much for you. If you feel good in the morning, I'd have at it. However, I would stop at the first sign of feeling bad again.
While I've never run with a fever (I've only recently really gotten into regular running, and haven't had a fever-type illness yet--knock on wood!), I have gone swimming, and it certainly did not help. If it were me and I were going to cut out anything, it would be the swimming. I'm not sure if it was the moisture or the activity in general, but I felt a ton worse after being in the water.
Having worked with high level D1 athletics, here are some guidelines that i've been around and have had myself and my athletes adhere to:
*No exercise/activity with a fever of 100+ deg because a fever is indicative of your body working hard fighting something off. Take that day to let your body recover, thus increasing the possibility of being 100% sooner, possibly the next day. Make sure you drink a lot of fluids and get enough calories and sleep when you have a fever.
This info bit is coming from a high school AP Bio (from a fantastic teacher and swim coach) background, so take it how you will.
When your body has a fever, it's in the stages of fighting off the virus or bacteria. So yeah, your body is definitely under stress. We were also told that running helps fight off the usual cold symptoms for a short time because it increases some chemicals in your body. I would say, go with how you feel but don't work too hard!
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