Returning to training after flu

sergen said:

What are people's experiences of this? Would interval sessions be best avoided?

Spend several days working hard just to re-hydrate and carbo load before you plan on doing anything hard. If you were quite ill, you're body's in deficit.

Hi Sergen. For what it's worth I'l give you my advice from my competitive running days. After the flu and especially if you had a sore throat with it, don't do any serious training for 2 weeks. As DCWD said the body is weak and needs time to gradually recover. I don't want to frighten the s...t out of you, but with some athletes the virus temporarily affects the heart (can't remember the exact details) and there have been cases of athletes going straight into hard training after a bout of the flu and they are no longer with us.
Someone no doubt will chip in and say they really trained hard after the flu and they were OK. They were lucky - not everyone is.
Remember better safe than sorry, what is 2 weeks in you life. Just do steady rides with no stress.

I'm not sure you have much choice. I am just beginning to ride again after being laid up for 5 days with a bad cold virus. In fact, I began feeling the effects of the cold 10 days ago but rode a 3-day stage race nonetheless. Then I took off a full week and did group rides the last two days. I just found that I didn't feel like riding at my usual power in my group rides. My power numbers were off 10-20% from normal. I don't feel any ill effects and I watched my nutrition and hydration carefully. I just felt "weak." But, my group ride mates got a kick out of seeing me dragging up the hills behind them instead of them chasing me. I'm glad I made their day.😄

From what I remember RD, the 2 athletes I knew of, died after forcing themselves to do gruelling interval training after having the flu.

Sillyoldtwit said:

From what I remember RD, the 2 athletes I knew of, died after forcing themselves to do gruelling interval training after having the flu.

Someone would have to have held a gun to my head to get me to do hard intervals the last two days. I just didn't feel up to going as hard as usual, so I didn't. When I become that obsessive about training, it'll be time to take up a new sport.😉

Thanks for the replies. That's made my mind up for my 'comeback' tonight - 45 minutes of light spinning on the turbo trainer will do just fine! I'll look to graudually up the intensity over the next week.

Sounds sensible Serge. You've already had 9 days rest, so a slow build up over the next week will do you no harm. As RD said, your body knows when it's time to push it again. It's the guys who push it when the body is screaming out to slow down that are courting trouble.😉