Both my wife and I got both shingles shots and neither of us experienced any sort of issues with either one. No issues from the covid shots either. As others have said, Shingles can be absolutely miserable and such a huge percentage of the population gets it. Definitely an avoidable misery for most of us.
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Got my second dose on Sunday. Monday about 11am I started getting the body aches. Not awful just annoying. Had the aches till late last night and woke up feeling fine this morning. Just did a rough threshold workout. Felt extra hard. Might should have held off another day. Anyway, I feel lucky my reaction was pretty mild. No fever, chills or headache. Definitely worth it. Oh, my arm was pretty sore. It would wake me up if I rolled over on it.
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Just had my second dose on Tuesday. About 8 hours later, I got flu-ish, had a bad night of chills/sweats/aches. Then about 24 hours after the shot, I began to feel more normal. A little shaky for the next day or so. I did an endurance ride (Lazy Mountain) and that was fine. Then this morning I tried to get back on schedule and do a VO2max ride. And that was not so fine. Should have done another easy spin.
But all in all, totally worth it. I’ve had shingles twice: once in my 20s and then again this year (54). You don’t even want a mild case.
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Thanks @Chris_Dawson for posting about your experience. I wish I had read it earlier in the week. I got my shingles vaccination (along with tetanus) on Monday. Had a pretty bad night Monday night with the same symptoms you describe and felt pretty weak on Tuesday. Felt enough better yesterday that I thought I would do the threshold workout on the schedule. Umm, nope. My first clue was that I struggled through the warmup, felt like I couldn’t get my breathing under control and my heartrate was too high for the actual effort. I made it through the first set and then thought well, maybe I’ll dial back the second set a bit. Dialed it down 1% then 2% then ever onward to 15% and thought, nope, nope, nope. So I quit the workout and rode gently on Zwift for a while just trying to get my heartrate back into a normal range for an easy effort. So I don’t even feel great today and will just try to do an endurance workout tomorrow. I hope I haven’t screwed up my chances of riding in my first ever grand fondo on Sunday. It was going to be my first try at riding 55 miles and I was super psyched because I feel like TR has been preparing me really well. Fingers crossed that this fatigue goes away in time 
. I think I’ll wait on the booster until after my next event so I can be prepared to spend a good week recovering from it. I’m glad I got the shot, but I do wish I had considered the timing a little better.
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For me, the first was the worst. Like you, I had a race scheduled after the second does. I would suggest scheduling the second does three days prior the race or after it.
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FWIW, my wife and I recently got our first shots (benefits covers it so getting it early) and only had sore arms from the injection. I wanted it as early as I could get it because I didn’t get chickenpox as a kid. It was really no fun when I I did get it in my early thirties and I do t know if getting later in life is a greater risk for shingles or not and don’t want to find out the hard way.
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I got the first shingles shot and a tdap in early June. I was able to do a Katahdin -3 and Black the day after. I struggled a little on both workouts but was able to finish. My HR was definitely higher than what it should have been when doing Black. I think I had to take a nap that afternoon. I attributed it to getting the two shots at the same time. I was fine by the next day and was back to normal.
I got the booster yesterday and it knocked me for a loop. I raced in the morning but wanted to get the shot done as I was going into a rest week. I had planned to join some friends for an easy group ride. When I woke up this morning, I definitely wasn’t feeling right and bailed on the ride. I had no appetite, lethargic(more than race tired), slight fever, and achy(not post race achy). I’ve taken ibuprofen twice today to help with how I feel and I ended up taking a 1.5 hour nap in the hammock while I was trying to read.
I didn’t have this severe of a reaction to the Covid(J&J and Moderna booster). It’s still better than getting shingles. I watched my grandfather and friends go through it and it wasn’t pretty.
My second shot a couple of weeks ago was just a sore shoulder. Maybe a few days longer than expected but that’s all. My wife was the same.
Wife and I both had sore shoulders for a few days after each dose, but that was it. Nothing compared to shingles itself, even a mild case.
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Yup…I made that same point earlier in the thread. Both shots knocked me on my ass for a day or two but I’ll take that gladly over a case of actual shingles.
Second made me more sore than the first but was still functional.
And mild shingles is nothing compared to postherpetic neuralgia which about 10% of shingles patients will develop. Order of magnitude more excruciatingly painful and could be with you the rest of your life.
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