Wout Poels forced to adjust his schedule after a "man flu" shut him down for a week: "I was going completely crazy"
Cycling
Wout Poels is on a mission this year. He was brought to XDS Astana as a potential GC leader in smaller stage races, but he also some personal boxes to tick off. Seventh place overall at the Tour of Oman wouldn't be a bad start to the new season, had it not been for an illness Poels contracted just as the race ended.
"I woke up after the last ride shivering from the cold, which is never a good sign. It was quite a long journey from Oman. So I didn't get home until 00:30 and haven't touched the bike for a week since then," he explains in his own podcast In Koers.
Poels continues and it turns out to be a rather specific flu virus: the man flu. "It was terrible. I said to my wife: if you ever have to give birth, you should just think about this moment, how hard it is for me," Poels says jokingly. He continues in that vein for a while. "At one point I thought: if this is my time, then so be it. I've had a good life. I felt so bad. Unbearable. You have a thermometer in your ear all day long and when it read 38.6... I was going completely crazy."
But seriously; Poels did indeed have a bad case of the flu. "It kept going on and on, but the doctor said the flu can last at least a week. Then you hope it will be over a bit quicker, but I really didn't touch the bike for seven days."
As a result, some things have been deleted and adjusted in Poels' program. "When I got sick, after four or five days without a bike it was clear that we'd better skip the French races for a while."
Poels' program now includes the Tirreno-Adriatico from March 10. Just a week after the Italian race finishes, he'll sign up for another week-long stage race in Catalunya with preparation aimed on Giro d'Italia in May. Poels wishes to complete his collection of Grand Tour stages there.
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