A year ago, a cold was a cold. If I had one, I’d be
miserable, I’d look like death and people would generally refrain from a cuddle,
but we’d all otherwise go about our days. Today, however, venturing out in
public with a cold feels like you’re threatening the security of the nation.
People stare in horror, hurry their children away and tighten their face masks
at the mere sight of your blood shot eyes or, heaven forbid, the sound of an
involuntary sneeze, however muffled by your incendiary tissues.
My cold this week has put me firmly in the ‘he must have coronavirus, let’s avoid him’
camp, but I can’t blame people for scrambling to the nearest exit in their bid
to escape the fallout zone of my nostrils. While I most definitely don’t have
coronavirus - no fever, no continuous
cough and no loss of taste or smell – I’ve not exactly been an advert for
positive wellbeing either, a point that was brought starkly home to me on my
first post-cold run.
In hindsight, I should have left it one more day, but in
my Lemsip-addled brain, I was determined to show this cold who was boss and get
back to running. Over compensating for the slight dip in temperature, I
spectacularly over dressed for the gentle 5KM I had planned, donning leggings
and a buff around the ears. These served to almost instantaneously warm me up
to a beyond comfortable temperature and set the trend for what was to be the
most uncomfortable run of the year.
Without wanting to put you off your dinner, colds
inevitably come with mucus and the kilometres that followed saw much of that
mucus attempting to find its way out of my nose or down my throat. The result,
I imagine, was the sight of a sweaty man whose bloodshot eyes were streaming
and whose nose was running faster than he was. The strange gurgling/hacking
noises, meanwhile, were not too dissimilar to those you’d expect from your
average zombie. No wonder people were crossing the road 50-metres ahead of me, they
were probably rushing to find the nearest cricket bat with which to bring my
undead suffering to an end.
My energy levels were low, but at the back of my mind I
had a nagging voice – most likely that of my old PE teacher – telling me; “This is good for you. It’ll sweat it out of
you.” Of course, a large part of me wanted to believe it, but another part
of me wondered whether “sweating it out of you” was supported by any kind of
clinical evidence. Much in the same way as “run it off” was often used in my
school days as a cure for sprained ankles and lower limb fractures, I doubted
whether there had ever been a published study of either practice in the British
Medical Journal. Nevertheless, I kept going.
Labouring around the familiar route, I was of course
aware that I was still poorly, so I purposefully ensured that I maintained as
much distance as I could between myself and anyone else on the pavements. The
result was that I zig-zagged across streets and stumbled off kerbs, looking
like I’d taken my last two paracetamol with a pint of Jack Daniels. However, I
know that I did the right thing by my fellow pedestrians – as the majority of
runners always do, despite the occasional glassy-eyed stares of those sceptical
of anyone breaking a sweat.
By the time I reached home, I felt like I’d been in a fist
fight. Everything ached and I had a ringing in my ears, but my breath
eventually returned, my eyes stopped watering and, as I stepped into the
shower, I realised that I actually did feel better for it. My body had needed a
bit of a beasting to get it functioning properly and my mind had needed the
wake up call to stop moaning and get on with getting better.
Granted, running with a cold is perhaps not a training
session any of us would ever opt for, but when you’ve got no option – and
providing you can accept the fact that you are going to look the worst you have
ever looked – my 100% non-clinical advice is go for it. Just remember to take a
tissue or two with you.
