Biting off more than I could chew on a recent hike

It will soon be too cold outside to do anything outdoors where I live so when a friend of mine who regularly runs triathlons invited me on a nature hike I jumped at the opportunity. I am a relatively fit person especially considering my age. I am also very stubborn when it comes to finishing what I start. Even though I knew that my friend is in much better cardiovascular shape than I am, I wasn't going to give up and because of that I am paying the price for it the day afterwards.

I am happy that I went on this hike but I was not prepared for how grueling it was actually going to be. I worked myself so close to my limit that I am actually ill with various colds because of it. I have no proof of this being the case but I think that my body was actually in the process of successfully fighting off a cold that I was unaware that I was fighting, but because I put my body through so much stress my "resources" were diverted to that battle and this allowed the illness to get through.

Now when my friend told me that we were going on a 3 hour hike, I was prepared for that because in my mind a "hike" is just a nature trail, right? Well, in retrospect I should have asked for more details because on this particular journey almost all of it was hiking uphill and we also had to push a lot of branches out of the way because this trail isn't used a great deal by the locals and especially not now at the end of the season. These are questions that I will ask in the future.

I do exercise almost every day but I never do something that keeps my heartrate this high for 3 hours. Burning nearly 1800 calories in one activity is something that I can't recall ever doing other than the couple of times I was involved in competitive racing such as triathlons and other such things.

While I am pleased with myself for not giving up, there is a reason why I wear this Garmin. I really shouldn't spend any time in the "maximum" heart rate zone because it is called maximum for a reason. You are truly pushing your body to the limit when you get to this sort of thing and I think it was my own stubborn attitude and not wanting to admit that my friend is far more athletic than I am that resulted in me being in this way. I know that there were multiple times that I was panting hard on the trail and he didn't seem all that affected by it.

This was a real eye-opener to me about how fit other people are in comparison to a "normie" like me.

I am quite ill now and I really don't think I was exposed to any sort of virus while I was doing this. I truly believe that I put my body in such a state to wear I almost wasn't physically capable of taking more steps that I may have worn down my immune system and made myself ill because of it. I am not a medical person but I would imagine that our bodies are constantly battling things that can make us sick and if you use too many of the body's resources to do something like this, the body only has so much that it can do to fend off illness.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else out there has ever exercised to such a point where they became sick afterwards.

I told my buddy that in the future I will need to be warned about how difficult something is going to be but that was a silly things for me to request. We all know our own limits and honestly, I should have just spoken up and told him that I either need to turn back or take more breaks.