How to Avoid Getting Sick While in Training

From TrainingPeaks
Winter is nearly upon us and as the air temperature drops, you can bet your bottom dollar that an increased number of us will be missing training sessions with coughs, colds, sore throats and the flu.
Understanding what you can do to minimize the chances of getting sick is a good idea so that you can avoid interruptions to your TrainingPeaks training plan over the off-season (or when your heavy training begins again).
But, just how susceptible are athletes to getting sick?
There’s a long standing and widely held (though not fully proven) belief that exercising has a “J” shaped effect on the immune system and, by extension, on your susceptibility to picking up infections and illnesses.
The graph below (taken from a 1994 paper on the subject) illustrates this idea nicely:

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