Well, it’s finally my turn. I’m fully vaxxed and boosted. We took a spring break trip to NYC for my daughter’s 18th birthday to see some shows and tour NYU. Thursday night I felt a little worn out, but assumed that was from a week of walking NYC. Flew home Friday. Friday night throat felt a little scratchy. Woke up Saturday with drippy nose and sore throat, heavy exhaustion. Sunday added congestion and some diarrhea. Took Imodium before bed. Still waking up Monday, but very sore throat and heavy congestion.
My daughter has typical cold symptoms. Neither of us have fever. She’s stressed about missing school because it’s senior year.
My wife has tested positive but is completely asymptomatic.
Argh, I just joined the club! 1st positive test (though I suspect I had a mild case all the way back in March 2020 before testing was readily available). Fully vaccinated but at this point my last booster is a very long time ago.
Several season power PRs and signs of imminent all-time PRs on Saturday’s ride, then Saturday night had a night out / work function which was the first time I’ve really felt comfortable enough around large groups to let loose a bit. Ate a big meal, had a few beers, got to bed really late. But the weather report was good for Sunday and there was a big long group gravel ride I wanted to do - plus it was exactly 2 weeks prior to a 200km gravel race which is a ‘B’ event on my calendar, so perfect timing for the last big dose of extra fatigue (and I usually respond really well to monster days out once I recover from them). I dragged myself out of bed to go to the ride with less than 5 hours sleep, thinking I’d be hanging onto the back and really struggling, but I was actually still pretty close to being able to hold the same power numbers as Saturday - I’d clearly been coming into some form! Was really tired Sunday evening but that was to be expected - big long sleep into the holiday Easter Monday morning and woke feeling rested but still carrying fatigue from the weekend (as expected for a -50 TSB).
Monday night (day 0) I felt a small tickle in my throat so took an extra vitamin C and made sure I got another long sleep. Decided if I still felt the tickle in the morning I should test prior to attempting my VO2 workout. No change this morning (Tuesday) so I did a test and got an instant positive. I initially wondered if I should still do something like Volunteer since I’m still feeling alright, but after reading this thread back as far as about October it seems like full rest is a better plan, especially until I know whether my symptoms will progress or not. RHR, HRV, and body temperature all pretty normal so far so fingers crossed!
Have got a couple of short practice-crit type rides on this coming weekend and then the 200km gravel event next weekend. Not making any decisions about either just yet, though it seems like any hard efforts this weekend are unlikely. Will edit this post with updates to keep myself sane during convalescence!
The Matt Fitzgerald article linked in this previous post is a really helpful guide!
EDITS with updates:
Midday Tuesday (Day 1) - headaches started
~8pm Tuesday - fever spike. I tried to just let it do its thing, but after failing to get to sleep and stay asleep from about 9pm-2am I finally took paracetomol/acetaminophen and a sleeping pill. Tiny bit of a cough starting overnight as well.
~9am Wednesday (Day 2) - fever returned after meds wore off but didn’t seem as bad. More painkillers through the day whenever fever came back. Feeling acceptable on the meds but dizzy, feverish, and confused off of them. Cough is unchanged.
Day 2 evening - add mild sneezing and sore throat. Sleeping pills and pain killers to get through the night, but even that didn’t make things peaceful - sleep tracker said I was moving almost constantly throughout.
Day 3 - fatigue increasing. No longer able to cook a meal or do a small task without needing a rest after. Had to take a nap after I had a shower (but couldn’t stay asleep more than 20 mins). Skipped my afternoon dose of painkillers to see if my fever was still there and I’m pretty sure my body temp went to the highest it’s been since I was a teenager.
Day 4 - fever partially broke sometime after my 4am meds and I woke feeling better rather than worse for the first time. Still pretty awful, but the impact on morale was huge! Fever still present at low level and increasing throughout the day so went back on the meds. Sore throat now pretty significant and a similar raw feeling in my sinuses (I assume that’s the tissue damage from initial immune response?) Cough mostly resolved.
Day 5 - woke feeling better than day 4 but definitely still ill. Fresh covid test still just as positive as day 1. Felt pretty good throughout except for the sore throat. No painkillers all day. First sign of a tender lymph node in my neck. Then proceeded to have a horrificially bad night of sleep - constant tossing and turning and waking up drenched in sweat multiple times, so perhaps a return of fever?
Day 6 - can’t tell the difference between the remaining symptoms of illness and those of bad sleep. Really disappointed not to be continuing yesterday’s encouraging recovery trajectory. Still got low grade fever, sore throat, tender lymph node.
Day 7 - woke feeling almost identical to days 5-6. Starting to get really tedious and frustrating watching this drag out.
Day 8 - no change
Day 9 - sleep tracker thinks I’ve recovered and the numbers look encouraging, but test result is still identical to day 1.
Day 10 - another great sleep and feeling pretty much recovered. Test still very positive, but decided to try a z2 workout. All felt relatively OK until the upper end of z2 when it was clear there’s still something going on in my chest. Not bad and not difficult to deal with, but enough that I decided to shut it down early out of caution. Probably should have picked a recovery session instead of a productive workout and then might not have had any issue at all.
Day 11 - still no symptoms other than a bit of lingering congestion. Still positive.
Day 12 - first time I’ve seen the test line come up slower than the control line so hopeful of a negative test in the next couple days. Did Mokelumne +1 which was mostly fine but a fair bit of cardiac drift and requiring a bit more effort than normal to keep up with breathing. Also something off with ERG mode so the sprints came late and lasted longer than they should - ended up with a 1m season power PR. Legs definitely felt it for the rest of the day but otherwise no complaints (except for the fact my ‘B’ race was today and I wasn’t there).
Day 13 - FINALLY TESTED NEGATIVE! Even woke up in time for the Sunday club run, but before I managed to get out of bed and test I fell asleep for another 3 hours. 11 hour sleep must be something to do with the workout from the day before. Probably for the best as now I’ll be able to do a shorter outside freeride and not be matching anyone’s pace but my own.
Day 13 pt2 - When I finally did make it outside for that ride I did a pretty surprisingly solid 40 minute tempo effort and beat a longstanding PR on a draggy climb - potentially because I couldn’t really spike my power much higher than that so my pacing was heavily enforced.
Week 3 - This was a scheduled recovery week anyway so I took it as a chance to freeride guided by feel. There was no need to hold back for the recovery week but also no pressure to get back into intervals. I had a couple of 10-15 minute city centre commutes each weekday but ended up skipping my scheduled trainer rides. Used the commutes to test the water a bit and found that pretty much anything above threshold still gave a bit of a chest-tightness feeling - not quite asthmatic but maybe more like hayfever?
Wk 3 Weekend - Saturday I did a kind of gravel time trial around a training loop and did alright, but tempo felt like sweet spot and sweet spot felt like threshold and threshold felt like VO2. Just a bit of tightness lingering in the chest. Sunday I marshaled a gravel race and had a couple of 1hr rides over really steep rolling terrain to do setup and teardown - my ride files look a bit like an anaerobic workout and that’s what it felt like. No struggle to complete and available power seemed relatively normal.
Week 4 - back into my next build block. VO2uesday served up a 3.7 where my last one pre-Covid was a 4.5 - I rated it moderate. Z2 weds felt normal. Threshold Thursday served up a higher PL than my last attempt and I rated it hard, where the previous was very hard. I’d say that puts me almost exactly where I left off - probably not quite as robust fitness but I’m effectively where I was. So basically I’ve lost 4 weeks of training all in.
Hope that N=1 account helps give someone a better sense of at least one possible progression!
I’ve actually been thinking about starting a separate thread about this. Might do so during my sofa time. Basically I’ve started to connect the dots to suspect that strong hangover rides are actually far more down to all the extra carbs we tend to eat on a night out. Easily 3x the calorie count of a normal dinner and made up of mostly bread or potatoes or similar.
Covid in July of last year. Did a 500km backcountry race in August that almost killed me. Finally went to get antibiotics for the lung butter that has been with me since. Lungs are finally clear… for now. lol
Just ended up recounting a bit of my experience on another thread and realised that after just less than 4 weeks I feel like I’m pretty much where I was when I first got ill, so came back to finish updating my covid journal post. Hope it’s helpful for someone!
The Matt Fitzgerald article was a great reference point to give me some confidence that I was doing the right thing by taking it easier than I thought I needed to.
Oh man really struggling after covid. Here in the UK covid has been circulating, but I’m mostly a hermit other than grocery shopping so I’m pretty low risk while the family is on holiday… Or so I thought.
Felt a bit groggy on 30/31 August, but put it down to hay-fever. Then had a sportive on 2 September up in the Peak District (highly recommended btw - it’s a stunning place to ride). Woke up on 2/9 feeling pretty crap so rather than the 160km did the 120km. By Wednesday I was in really bad shape and bed ridden on Thursday (7 September) when I took the test - which was positive immediately. It was a pretty unpleasant episode, no doubt made much worse by the cycle.
Fast forward a few days and I’ve mostly recovered but my nose is still stuffy and pretty low on energy. Struggled to complete an easy 83km ride last weekend, and really struggled with a low zone 2 work out yesterday evening.