Ill health
April 21, 2017 § 36 Comments
I’ve noticed that cyclists seem to get sick a lot, and bike racers, crazy sick. One person gets a cold and then everyone gets it. You’d think that with all the fitness and healthy lifestyle, especially the deep-fried kettle chips, bike racers would never get sick. But they do.
And if they’re not sick, they’re hurt. You don’t hardly have to ask a bike racer how they are doing. They will never say, “Great!” or “My legs are off the hook!” or “Amazing!”
Instead they will tell you about their whooping cough, or their dysentery, or their inflamed urethra, or their separated shoulder, toothache, etc. I know that Tour de France riders are so fit they constantly hover between immaculate form and dropping out of the race due to a summer cold. Apparently the fitter you are, past a certain point, the weaker your immune system.
I never say never, but I’m never sick. Maybe once every couple of years I get a legit cold with sniffles and an annoying fever, but the last time I was in bed due to illness was a long time ago. There was the time in 2015 when I broke my nutsack and got laid up for a short while, but other than that, pretty much nothing. And although I always feel gutted after a hard ride or race, it only takes a day or so to bounce back and feel great again.
One reason I don’t get sick is that I’m never really all that fit, certainly not razor fit. The only way my belly muscles would ever get cut is if I shaved them with a rusty razor. So there’s no way I’m going to ever be hovering on the precipice of supreme fitness with a compromised immune system.
The other reason is that growing up I was a filthy little kid. I bathed once or twice a month until I was thirteen. The only way to get the dirt and grime off was to sweat, and in Texas we did that a lot. Our dog Fletcher was covered in fleas and the fleas always had a secondary feast on us. Plus there were ticks. Sometimes you wouldn’t find them for a week or so, until they had swelled up into giant green blobs that exploded like blood bombs when you popped their abdomens. Then the head would stay lodged under your skin and get infected, and you’d usually end up cutting open the infection with a filthy pocket knife to drain the pus. As a little kid bonus my brother and I would always sniff the other one’s festering sore. “Gross!” we would shriek happily.
We had lots of cats, and they’d scratch us and bite us pretty regularly. Nothing is nastier than a cat scratch. The giant red welts would last for days and sometimes get infected. Outside we’d get stung by everything, mosquitoes of course, but also honeybees because we loved to try to catch them and put them in jars, bumblebees, and yellow jackets. Nothing was more fun than pelting a giant yellow jacket nest with rocks and then running. No matter how many times we learned that you can’t outrun wasps, we’d do it all over again.
My point is that as a child I must have developed a very strong immune system as an alternative to being dead. I’m sure I got sick, but I sure don’t ever remember it. What I remember is playing sick to get out of school, but that only worked a few times a year.
As a cyclist I think a lot of my immune system strengthening comes from water bottles. There is nothing as nasty as a water bottle. You can try to clean them as much as you want, but the manufacturers make the nozzles so that they can’t really be cleaned. They’re like mini-toilets that can’t ever be flushed. Finally it just gets so disgusting that you throw it away and buy a new one, otherwise, who would ever replace a water bottle? I never do that. I will drink from a nasty water bottle until the rubber rots off. What’s a little gangrene or encephalitis?
Between my water bottles and my mediocre fitness, I hope to not encounter sickness for many years to come. But you can still tell me about yours.
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Cycling in the South Bay 
The nozzle comes off to be washed, for those not willing to toughen up their immune system.
The combined efforts of Mr. & Mrs. WM, employing generations of Japanese cleaning techniques and perseverance, have been unable to completely remove the immune toughening goodies.
Aha, perhaps my recent access to baby bottle brushes designed to clean teats is the secret. Pop the silicone bit off with a butter knife, clean in soapy water with small bottle brush, rinse, drip dry and replace onto bottle.
The area around the inside of the silicone bit is encased in a double layer and can’t be reached with anything …
Oh well, I was wrong, sorry, I must remember cleaning before they got too bad. Swapped over to Purist bottles years ago as favourite companies create their own artwork for them.
Camelbak know they have a problem, full cap replacement available, but not just a nozzle swap.
https://www.camelbak.com/en/drinkware/R04032–Podium_Replacement_Cap?color=87d4ec39aee840dcac3adf60d7fd445e
Weird as they have Eddy valve replacements for my kids bottles.
I get sick as in often as you, maybe less, but I’m sure I’m less fit than you riding 4-9 hours most weeks.
I rinse my water bottles, briefly.
The farther away you are from super fitness, the better it is for everything … except being super fit!
“Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche; ‘Götzen-Dämmerung oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert’
Like quadriplegia?
I always read that as macht mich “stinker”. Huh. I guess your way makes sense too, tho.
Either way.
I’ve been on that ride
Thursdays at 6:35 AM, I hear … and GARY’S NEVER BEEN.
Eureka moment, I’ve sick for about a month on and off and I stick my bottles in the dish washer…
Month long sickness? Ouch.
And isn’t “ill health” an oxymoron? Like “healthy illness”?
Health admits of degrees, I’d think. “She’s in good health, bad health, ill health … “
Mini unflushable toilets 😂
NOT a best seller at Home Depot!
😂
Spot on WM!
My bottles live in a perpetual crusty hue of Beachbody Energize canary yellow and I tend to medicate most cuts and scrapes with dirt, manure and duct tape. Cant remember the last time I was fit or sick.
And I’ve never heard you complain. “How’s it going, Dan?” “Great!” … horseshit, dirt, and plenty of it!
How’d you get a close up picture of my water bottle?
Stealth, always stealth.
Here’s my stupid theory: Getting sick is directly related to body fat %. When I was 165 pounds and supremely fit, I did that hovering “healthy/sick” thing. The older I got as I tried to stay at some “reasonable” racing weight, the easier it was to get sick, which was all the time and took weeks to recover from, every single time. Sleep seemed to help. Now that I am fat and happy, although still eating pretty healthy and exercising, I never get sick and I sleep less.
Like most stupid theories, I not only like it, but it appears to fit the facts!
Our sure-fire way of keeping water bottles germ-free is to never put water inside…German cyclists prefer “ein Radlermaß”—a mix of beer and Sprite..
Or just go straight to the paint thinner!!
Getting head lice, swimming in stock tanks and raising swine in 4-H as a youth fortified me in a similar manner. Dr. Edmund Burke (RIP) wrote the definitive article on water bottle care.
Yes, I left out head lice. Had those, too! Not to mention mice, rats, roaches, squirrels, and possums, along with their various fellow traveler microorganisms, throughout the various living spaces.
Do you ever ride off road or maybe in Chino near the cattle pens? You can get giardia from that also, the faster people in front of you can sneeze and you can catch it. Both of which are GROSE!
No to off-road, and no to Chino!
I had a good friend from high school who spent 5 years and two months in Chino, rent free, three squares a day, clothing provided.
An alum of the local college, no doubt. Scholarship.
The FDA has minimum daily recommendations for Vitamins A, B, C, etc. What’s missing is an MDR for dirt. It’s a vital nutrient!
Working on it …