Comrades Marathon health tips

All schools should ideally be considered out of bounds for Comrades runners.

The problem is that when you are in the height of your training, you run the knife edge between being superbly fit and going over the edge into illness.  

Your immune system will currently be at its lowest after peak training and only this taper period will allow this to return to normal.

This matter is aggravated further when you have run a long or hard training session. For this reason, you should be particularly careful over this period.

Ideally you will already have had a flu vaccination, but if not, do so as soon as possible, although the effect will probably be minimal.

Ideally have this in the afternoon after your morning training session and make the next training a full 24 hours later.

This will protect against any adverse reaction and allows you to recover from the jab before another stressful training session. 

If you do get ill there is every chance you will be prescribed antibiotics. Typically this will mean taking a 5 or 10-day course of pills, and you should understand that these are effectively a poison, which destroys both the bad and the good natural bacteria in the body.
 
Once the course of pills is completed, it’s time to start replacing the components to allow the regeneration of the good bacteria. Taking vitamins and vitamin B in particular, is useful.

Unfortunately it takes at least three weeks to recover from all effects of antibiotic treatment.

This means that any antibiotic treatment from now will affect your Comrades performances, and you should probably withdraw from the race.

The challenge is that the treatment seems to mask the perceived effort of running and as such you tend to push too hard and this can have major detrimental effects on your health.

If you feel you must run and have been cleared by a medical doctor, then you should adjust your finish time by around an hour. 

Trying to achieve your normal time is not only unrealistic, but a health risk. Many of the runners who have experienced serious medical problems during past Comrades have been those who were ill in the final month. 

Consider using homeopathic and natural remedies to protect against illness. Substances such as Echinacea, Vitamin C and Zinc tablets are recognised immune system boosters, and taking a daily dose of glutamine after training and at night can also help. 

A general all-round multivitamin and mineral tablet, such as the Form and Fitness combination can act as insurance in the prevention of the onset of a virus. 

In reality it is almost impossible to keep the kids – and their germs – under control, but it is possible to avoid some everyday situations, which leave you open to risk.

Try to keep out of lifts and other enclosed areas. Make sure you keep away from people who are sneezing or coughing in a confined area.

Do not allow yourself to make sudden changes in temperature, from hot outside to air-conditioned indoors, or sudden cool downs after training. Change as soon as you can after finishing your session. Keep up your energy levels up and allow yourself sufficient recovery between training.

All these things will help.

Ironically if you have the option between an injury or illness at this time, pick the injury – with around 3 weeks to go there is more that can be done to sort out an injury than there is for illness at this time and any illness now effectively will take you out of the race.
 
Clearly this is not the time to pick up a cold or flu – so spend more time at home in the company of those whose germs you already share!

(File Photo: Gallo Images)

Twitter - @omvirtualcoach @SportswaveAndre