In autumn 2021 my son started kindergarten, at the age of one. COVID was still very much a topic and our kindergarten, like most German kindergartens, still had restrictions in place and conducted daily testing. He never brought home COVID, but fair amount of other germ related unpleasantness. Germ related unpleasantness that he generously shared with his parents.

The winter 2021-2022 was, however, not too bad. Masks, infection protection rules and norms kept things at bay. And when they disappeared in spring 2022 things went wild and now it feels like we have been sick for a full year straight.

And we kinda have.

in April 2022 I started logging my run training properly. Not just passively on Strava, but also in an Excel file. One field in the document, which I fill out, is simply a flag that indicates that I did not train that day due to illness. I do not discriminate, I fill it in if I feel like it would be a bad idea to run because I have a proper cold, fever or tummy bug.

I don’t only register data, I also look at it and sometimes plot it. And the data reconciles with my gut feeling. After 2 years of never being sick, never having a cold, I spent a full year with a cold. Just look at this chart:

• grey area are days which I was not sick, red area are days in 2022 where I was sick and turquoise are days where I was sick in 2023.

Table is also helpful:

• I had to limit my running in 11 out of 13 months due to some sort of illness.
• in March this year I was sick for 16 out of 30 days.

Prior to COVID and fatherhood I would spend perhaps 1-2 weeks each year sick. Less than I did in March this year. I do however expect this to get better in the coming years.

Firstly, as my son ages and his immune system gets stronger (and his eating food from other kids plates stops), he should bring home less germs.

Secondly, my immune system will return from a 2 year holiday and be more efficient at kicking some germs but.