I don't know specifically for COVID19

For healthy people, untrained may have as low as 95....say 95-98 and highly trained may have 98 up (sometimes even 100). (I don't know for sure, but eg smokers may go down to something 92).

....ie lots of cross over but a bit higher when trained.

The use of pulse oximetry in COVID19 patients has been compared to mountaineers....it will reduce, even to 70s and, if adapted, mountaineers will still feel okay at rest but going up the mountain feels somewhat tougher.

For the mountaineers, SpO2 goes down due to less O2 in the air, for COVID19 patients, it goes down because the interface where the airways give O2 to the blood stream is physically reduced due to inflammation.

I suspect that, as a measure of how much the airways are affected, it should give similar results in highly trained vs untrained individuals.

In the return to running I have had similar experience. I will feel very winded on any uphill and often feel out of breath with a zone two or aerobic HR. I was running all winter as well and now am basically running recovery run pace for an hour and getting wiped out. If I put together two sub 9 minute miles I feel smoked for a day. I have seen much better recovery on the bike, nowhere near my pre covid numbers but getting better weekly. I have noticed on the bike my power is coming back quicker than my endurance.

Glad (well not really) to know that I’m not the only one. Bike ftp is where I left of pre-covid, but my runs are like MP + 30-60s. I wonder how my swim would be.

I got sick while skiing in Steamboat in January. Had the worst sickness I've had in 13 years, high fever and cough but not the usual sore throat and runny nose onset symptoms. My resting HR went from 43 to 70 in one day. The fever went away after about 6 days and slowly get back into my training routine but it took 4 weeks before I had my first decent workout.
I'm going to get an antibody test at some point. This thing has been around longer than people think.

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What's your CdA?

took me three months to completely recover

Wish I had taken at least a month off and done nothing but of course I kept tying because I needed my fix

became run down , had three courses of antibiotics for unrelated infections as my body just could not fight them

now back training thankfully

I was interviewed by triathlete magazine last week about my experience, comes out this week I think

Cheers Steve

The virus is absolutely crazy. My wife and I (both healthcare workers) got sick the second week of March. We had the typical symptoms-- dry cough, headaches, low-grade fever, severe malaise, loss of smell/taste. Most of those symptoms lasted ~ 3 weeks or so. We both got tested again a month later (rapid) and were negative, but still had shortness of breath for an additional 2-3 weeks. Our daughters never experienced any of the classic symptoms, but our youngest was hospitalized with relatively severe case of ITP (very low platelet count) related to the virus (she tested positive at the hospital)-- there's a write-up in American Academy of Pediatrics.

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/...s.2020-1419.full.pdf

Prior to getting sick I was trained up for the Paris marathon. Getting sick wiped me out -- limiting me to 4-6 mile runs (1.5min slower than usual pace).

Its June 8th and I am just starting to feel like myself again.

I just got tested today. 2 days ago I was out on an easy 5mi run and it felt way too hard for the pace I was going. I figured it was just a bad day. Yesterday I was out of breath just going up stairs in the house and never even considered working out. Today was even worse and I started coughing a bit so I got the test.

The nurse who swabbed me asked if it felt like I was in the mountains and it finally clicked. I've gone off on a couple mountaineering adventurers and it feels like trying to climb once you get above 13,000ft and even 14,000. Like EXACTLY the same feeling. Anyways I won't know for sure if I have it until the results come back, but this is certainly something new I haven't ever had a virus do to me, and I'll be sure to update as to how long it takes for me to get back and what I notice.

Thanks to everybody else who shared as well. I was freaking out a bit before reading this thread, but now I feel better seeing that people are able to get back into training.

I got sick early March my doc friends say I had it. Fever, awful cough, fatigue and struggle breathing. My husband got sent for a chest c-ray- but this was all before testing had started where we live- he got it after a trip to Santa Clara for work. I was down for a solid three weeks (worked from home and did not visit my mom in her care facility)

I feel like I am turning a corner. I went mountain biking the past three days and felt pretty good even with a fair deal of climbing at altitude. My running is terrible and totally variable day to day. Some days I just can’t catch my breath at all- but I barely have those any more.

I had a severe light flu like upper respiratory illness (not sure if it was Covid-19. no one was talking about it then.) the last week in December and it went into a the first couple weeks of January in terms of not feeling like I could train and even struggled with just going up and down the stairs in that first week. It was a friend that owned a chain of supplement stores that advised me to buy (N-acetylcysteine) NAC Sustain by Jarrow specifically because it is the only sustained release. You can find it it various places including Amazon for fairly cheap. At the link below it doesn't give a positive review for Covid-19, but this supplement sure worked for me. Within an hour of first use I was able to breathe better. I continued to use it for 3 weeks taking 2 - 3 times a day. A lot higher dose than the bottle, but what my friend said to use while I was recovering.

https://www.cebm.net/...n-treating-covid-19/

https://www.thailandmedical.news/...ac-supplements-helps

I am continuing to use NAC at a normal dosage along with quercetin, zinc, D3, K2 just as hopeful insurance.

Well things are slowly starting to progress. I think I am officially one month post onset of symptoms and three weeks without a fever and I was finally able to make it through a very slow completely flat 5K yesterday without having to walk.I got my taste back about a week ago and this morning for the first time I was able to smell nail polish remover.lol.

here's my story:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/...4ifpszaja-story.html

I can't fully confirm that I had it, since I came down with something I believe to be it in mid-December. I've considered the antibody tests, but with how inaccurate they are it just doesn't seem worth the cash. My symptoms lined up pretty perfectly for Covid.

So on a scale of 1-10, during it I would say that it was a 10, but then hearing about those who have to be hospitalized and on ventilators I suppose it might not hit the ten on the scale. Days 1-3 were pretty flu-like, but day 4 was unlike anything I'd experienced. Day 4 I started to feel like I was coming out of it and decided to sit up and watch some tv that day. Everything seemed fine and then 8pm rolled around and it was like the flick of a switch. The night of day 4 was Achilles last stand and when I awoke on day 5 I remarked at how that experience could kill an older person. I lost 4.5 pounds sweating on the day 4 night and was in and out of intense fever dreams all while coughing out of control and struggling to get enough oxygen to not be gasping for air. The next week was a repeat of not feeling great during and then nighttime was a struggle. 2 weeks out was just a really annoying dry cough everyday and then extreme fatigue. I was sleeping about 12 hours per day over the Christmas break and my hip flexors atrophied to the point where just walking and bending over was pretty demanding. After about 5-6 weeks the cough went away and I was able to exercise again without feeling like death. Now at six months removed from having what I think was Covid, the one thing that I still see from it compared to previous years of training was that it was significantly harder to gain any true fitness or even perceived fitness in the spring. I also have found that harder efforts have made me more sore than ever before, but perhaps this is just a sign of getting older vs. lingering Covid effects.

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Team Zoot 2023

thanks for sharing this. sounds terrifying.

Today marks three months since first symptoms. I've had a mild case, but it's going to be a long-running battle because this can be one tenacious m-fer of a virus. I keep thinking I'm mostly recovered. I've been "mostly recovered" since about day 5. Here's what it's looked like.

It started with a weekend of tremendous fatigue, where I kept taking long naps all day long both days. I even worked out both mornings.

Then the coughing started on a Monday. I can recall the first cough. It was weird. This little puff of a dry cough out of nowhere. I joked to my family that I might be coming down with covid. Ha ha ha. Three months later, and I still cough daily. Some days more, some days hardly at all. Early on my lungs burned like I've never ever experienced. Never had a fever. I'm not sure what shortness of breath is, but I don't think I've had anything severe like that. There was a period where I might need to lie down for a couple minutes after walking up the stairs to recover, but that only happened a few times. When I'd go shopping, I would start to get a little dizzy and unsteady because breathing through the mask and standing would be too much sometimes.

Always had fatigue, and as recently as a week ago I slept 12 hours a night for four or five straight nights. With mid-day naps thrown in. I started taking days off from training, but always felt like I was turning a corner and getting better. I even did IronmanVR3. Because I was on the upswing.

Other symptoms that I've had along the way include a sore throat for a day or two. Headaches, so many headaches. At some point every day I start feeling hot like I'm running a fever, but my temp is always 97 degrees or so. Weird aches and pains. One night I kept waking up because it felt like my leg was being rammed in the knee from the side by a bison, man that hurt. When I finally awakened in the morning, no pain at all, good as new. For a couple days, I kept getting random stabbing pains in a calf muscle, intense, like with a knife. I'd be in agony for a couple minutes, then the pain would completely disappear, on and off, over and over. The past day my index finger has been killing me near the furthest joint. And other weird, temperamental, transitory aches.

Lately I've had some brief periods of tingling in my arms. Comes and goes. Heart palpitations. Not long, but long enough for me to notice then they go away. I experienced a handful of weird episodes of a strange feeling of tension in my chest while I was resting, and on the last one I checked my heart rate for a minute and it was below 30 bpm. That was a few weeks ago and hasn't happened again. Much of the time I feel somewhat of a malaise, but not a terrible one, more of a mild one, if that makes any sense.

After taking six weeks off, I finally decided to start doing some light workouts again. I've done as much as 30 minutes of easy jogging and an hour of a tempo ride on the trainer. Some efforts have gone okay, some not so well. But I'll keep trying, listening to my body, throwing in the towel on a workout when I don't have it. And hoping that at some point, health returns to what it was, and that this isn't my new normal.

I read the article, but I don't think you mentioned where you got it from. Any idea?

My friend was infected by covid 19. He is a good athlete, and is recovering progressively. His coach advised him to wait for full recovery until all the symptoms go away.

I officially had it starting April 25th and it lasted about 7 days. In my experience symptoms were similar to but not as severe as flu.
After resolution of symptoms I was humbled by how short of breath and tachycardic I was even during low-level workouts.

Thankfully, I gradually recovered over about 4-6 weeks and currently feel that I’m back to 100% of previous exercise tolerance. I believe that that key to recovery is taking it easy as you return to working out. Be patient and grateful for a healthy body.

Side note: I did a full 140.6 with a close friend in DIY fashion on the same day I became symptomatic from COVID. I started the race feeling fine and ended with shortness of breath, body aches and chills. Timing was coincidental. We had a number of Family/friend supporters throughout the race experience. I ran the marathon between two of my buddies. I bro-hugged my friend and high-fived several others. Not a single person from that group has come down with any symptoms of any kind.

While anecdotal, to me this provides some support to the notion that being outdoors is extremely beneficial in preventing virus transmission. It significantly lessens my worry that one would get COVID from participation in an outdoor event like a triathlon. Stay active my friends!

I had relatively mild case in end of August. Fever for two days reaching 99F and constant fatigue, but was comfortable as long as all I was doing was watching TV or reading. Then gradual improvement. Episodes of fatigue lingered for a month, gradually decreasing and treatable with a nap. Lost taste and smell for about three weeks.

I'm 57 and had very good fitness level this spring. Ride or run every day averaging about 2 hours running and three hours riding per week. I'm not fast (10k PR in 1980s at 7 min/mile pace, 2019 5k pace 7:30 mile).

Mid-July I had calf injury and did not train for 1 1/2 weeks. I eased very slowly back for next four weeks but was doing about half volume and intensity. Got covid in mid-August.

Started easing into exercise two weeks later. Short walk/runs and easy rides. Never really felt out of breath but legs felt tired and heavy. If I went too hard, but feeling fine during the effort, I'd feel extremely fatigued afterward -- like after hard effort in sprint tri. This post-exercise fatigue has mostly disappeared now.

The last ten days I've felt almost completely normal. Fitness level is pretty high, maybe 90% of what it had been. I've made some short hard interval efforts on both bike and run, and these are comparable to where I was before injury and covid. I just need more volume to get back to where I was.

I'm grateful my covid case was minor and does not seem to have long-lasting effect. Worst thing really was the anxiety I had as I eased back in, worrying that there might be lasting cardio-pulmonary effects or damage. First four weeks exercising I took it very easy.

Peace and best wishes to all others who have had covid-19.

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________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

The one thing i want to point out (and ask) is about the re-occurrence of symptoms after a hard effort.

Here's my summary:

4th September: Tested positive
18th September: Completed isolation
19th Sep to 1st Oct: Felt run down and fatigued, no exercise
2nd Oct: Ran about 4km...not that bad
3rd Oct to 12 Oct: Ran a bit longer, a 5km, a 7km and a 10km plus a few 30min Zwift sessions
13 Oct (yesterday): A harder 7km at 4:15/km pace. Two hours later i started feeling like garbage and feeling like i was sick again.
I didnt have a fever or cough, but just felt 'sickly' and tired all day. Next day (today) woke up and was 80% better.


So...anyone else get symptoms after a hard effort? When I think back to a few of the other runs, i think i also had some mild symptoms come back then also. So do i stop exercising for a few weeks? Or do i just scale it back?

CF

A delayed and dysfunctional response to exercise - aka exercise intolerance - is the hallmark symptom of another post viral disease, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). You may have seen some media reports of Long Covid patients symptoms over lapping with ME symptoms.

It can be hard to identify exercise intolerance as the symptoms don't show up for up to 48 hours post exertion. Few doctors are aware of it, only some researchers.

From Practice Update:

"The persistent symptoms are heterogeneous, including clouding of mentation, sleep disturbances, exercise intolerance, and autonomic symptoms, and many overlap with those of patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis"

https://www.practiceupdate.com/...haul-covid-19/107352

Stopping cardio for a couple of weeks is the best idea. And when you ease back into exercise, do it super slow and beware of any symptoms. The last thing you want is to permanently make yourself sicker.

The post viral community is full of stories of people who thought they could exercise their way back to health and are now house or bed bound.

You may also find this long Covid neurology paper informative about autonomic dysfunction: https://n.neurology.org/...y/95/13/559.full.pdf

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Advocating for research & treatment for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).
http://www.meaction.net/about/what-is-me/

"Suck it up, Buttercup"
(me, to myself, every day)

I guess it seems my experience was a bit similar to yours. The fatigue came back for a few hours shortly after harder effort -- not real hard, just relatively harder than what I'd been doing. I was weird and a bit scary as I felt great during the exercise.

You are about two weeks behind me as my first recovery exercise was September 3. I eased back in, doing only 15 hours in September.

Three weeks ago I was a bit worried about the bouts of fatigue and was and taking naps every other day.

Today I did moderate tempo on my normal 3 miler. I didn't feel like I was pushing it too hard and ended up only two seconds off my fastest time per-mile pace in the spring (I just started strava in April). No nap and did much work in afternoon. Been over two weeks since last time I had a nap during the day.

Dial it back for a week, then gradually increase.

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________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

Positive test the second week of September. I got tested after noticing the smell and taste thing.
32 years old, male, 6'0 155lb, and I was in the best shape of my life. Was it bad? No. Was it annoying? Yes.
Symptoms were: night sweats and body aches, no smell or taste for 3 ish days.
I took a few days completely off and a few 1 hour easy Zwift rides and some easy runs. I needed a few weeks off anyway but I will echo what someone else said earlier, that my top 10% isn't back yet, especially on the bike.

How many of you who've tested positive for COVID-19 have had a discussion with your physician regarding the risk of myocarditis associated with COVID-19? There was a lot of discussion about this recently in Big Ten country where I live before the Big Ten decided to have a football season.

This is what they decided: All COVID-19 positive student-athletes will have to undergo comprehensive cardiac testing to include labs and biomarkers, ECG, Echocardiogram and a Cardiac MRI. Following cardiac evaluation, student-athletes must receive clearance from a cardiologist designated by the university for the primary purpose of cardiac clearance for COVID-19 positive student-athletes. The earliest a student-athlete can return to game competition is 21 days following a COVID-19 positive diagnosis.

This would be one of the first things I discussed with my physician if I tested positive for COVID-19. I've read in several articles, including this NYT article from September, that you don't have to be seriously ill with COVID-19 to be diagnosed with myocarditis after testing positive for COVID-19.

I'm interested what others who've tested positive for COVID-19 have heard, or not heard, from their physicians regarding this risk.

Maybe you are proving the "super spreader" theory that most people dont transmit the virus but there a few that are hyper spreaders. Does not make sense to me but maybe it is true.

As I stated before I underwent an EKG an echocardiogram and a stress test. The cardiologist apparently saw no reason for an MRI back to full workouts as normal all is well.