Sick before a race? Rachel Hannah offers advice for training with an illness

You trained and prepared exactly as you planned only to be left sneezing and sniffling a few days before the race. Your confidence is shot and you’re now left wondering whether or not to toe the start line. 

Getting sick before a race is among a runner’s greatest fears. And yet it happens all the time, including to the best runners. Perhaps a case of (un)wishful thinking, this is unlucky at best and cruel at worst.

Recently, Canadian Pan Am bronze medalist Rachel Hannah was gearing up for a number of key track races in which she hoped to qualifying for the upcoming Rio Olympics. Unfortunately, she was sidetracked with a bad sinus infection which left her struggling to breath and ultimately slowed her performance.

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We reached out to Hannah to comment on how to deal with running with and through an illness.

CR: When should or shouldn’t you run/train while sick?

RH: It may not always be easy to decide when to train and when to give yourself adequate time to rest. If the sickness requires time off work or extended time in bed, I would say it is best to rest for a few days until you are ready to get back to your usual routine. If you are able to go about your regular routine and you feel a bit better after running, then I would say it is safe to keep training as long as your sickness doesn’t start to get worse.

Symptoms above the neck such as a runny nose, congestion and sneezing are generally okay to train through but if there is any sort of infection including bronchial or a fever present with body aches it is best to consult with a doctor who can better advise you on whether or not it is safe to train.

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CR: How did being sick affect your training and race performances?

“It’s important to go into a race feeling confident in your fitness level since we all know how psychological running can be.”

RH: My recent illness started out like any other cold – runny nose, congestion, sore throat – but after a few weeks of sticking to my usual training routine, I felt worse and my cold advanced to a sinus infection. I knew it was time to see a doctor when I had significant trouble breathing and my workout times started to suffer. I had a week where all my workouts felt extremely difficult. I was prescribed antibiotics and a prescription nasal spray.

Due to a couple of weeks of reduced quality training, this negatively affected both of my races since I was not able to hit my target times in practice for a couple of weeks. This made it hard psychologically and physically when it came to racing. It’s important to go into a race feeling confident in your fitness level since we all know how psychological running can be. It is quite a hard decision to make to decide whether or not to race when feeling sick. Especially since most races are planned well in advance. In this special Olympic year, high quality 10,000 metre races on the track are also hard to find.

I decided to stick to the schedule, despite how I was feeling. In hindsight, I should have listened to my body and taken extra rest instead of following through with the scheduled racing plan. My coach and I joke now that training through this illness was my own form of “altitude training”…only done in Toronto.

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3) Are there any potential benefits and/or dangers of running while sick?

Potential benefits of running with mild sickness is the mental and physical boost you get from a run. This is usually the case when dealing with sickness that is not severe enough to interfere with your regular routine. It is still important to be active when experiencing minor illness like colds, especially if this is what your body is used to due to the benefits of stress reduction that exercise brings. I would advise to cut back on time and intensity during any form of illness to give your body time to recover.

However, if sickness requires time off work or extended time in bed, it is best to rest for a couple of days until you’re back to your usual routine before resuming training again. It could be dangerous to ignore signs that your sickness is getting worse and you aren’t listening to your body and giving it the proper rest it needs to recover.