My wife tested negative 3 times while I had it, she had no symptoms and we didnt actively quarrantine from each other… Last time she was sick was January, she had a bad cold that turned into a upper respritory infection that took two rounds of antibiotics to get rid of. She thinks she had covid then but that would debunk the theory that your antibodies only last 3-4 months.
I’m 29 with no underlying health issues. I had first signs of early symptoms (in hindsight) on 11/21, the same day I had scheduled a ramp test. Nothing severe, just a bit of GI discomfort and very mild scratchy throat. My resting HR was a bit on the high side of normal that morning, so I figured I may have a cold coming on, but proceeded with the ramp test (after completing SSBMVII). I got a bit of an FTP bump, so walked away feeling okay about it. The next few days were similar symptom-wise, but by 11/24, symptoms started ramping up. High resting HR, a lot of head congestion, and headaches primarily. It really just felt like a cold, and so I stubbornly proceeded with my workouts (beginning of SSBMVI as I am repeating base phases). I felt pretty good on the trainer and was hitting my numbers just fine. In the course of that week (while out of the office for Thanksgiving), a few co-workers tested positive. I scheduled a COVID test ASAP, but this wasn’t available until 11/29. Results came back positive on 12/1. At that point, my cold-like symptoms were on the decline, and I was torn between wanting to continue training and respecting the recovery process. So, for better or worse, I split the difference and swapped all workouts over to zone 2 work. I’m symptom-free as of 12/6, and planning to continue with zone 2 work until next week, at which point I’ll pick back up with SSBMVI if all is still feeling okay. I’m not planning on taking another ramp test until the next regularly-scheduled one, unless intervals have me feeling over-worked when I resume them.
Best of luck to everyone in their recovery process!
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Same with me. Detecting the smell of a poopy diaper has come back the slowest. Prior, I was really sensitive to it.
So I am a few weeks over being sick but I have noticed something strange. My sense of taste is different, now that it is back I find my sweet tooth is on fire and carbs is the only thing that sounds good. I have a sense of smell again, but there are some things I cannot smell. Very strange, but all in all it is not the biggest of life’s potential problems.
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I’m 3 weeks past my diagnosis and I can taste many things, but anything that has subtle flavors or requires olfactory sensors is nearly tasteless for me. My sense of smell is probably 25% of what it used to be. I am hoping that my body is just slow to rebuild those receptors and they will recover fully. I (had) a very keen sense of smell before and often used this for wine tastings and cooking, so I’m pretty frustrated, borderline distraught, over losing those abilities overnight. I even thought I could smell some respiratory illness because my dad came down with pneumonia and his breath smelled exactly like my coworker did right before he was put in the hospital for the same condition. I was hoping to find a way to test my theory but obviously that’s not gonna happen right now.
As far as exercise, I have only done a few walks, a fat bike ride/push, and a 4 hour ski tour (low intensity, only climbed 1300’ over 4 miles) so far. I have decided it’s time to get back on the trainer and do a Z2 ride tonight and determine if my body is ready to start training again. I would like to also have an EKG test but haven’t scheduled an appointment yet.
Contacted Covid 16 Oct ,didn’t have any of said symptoms for 4days just felt a bit unwell , day 5 went for test feeling awful.Tested positive, never felt so ill in my life but no respiratory problems, passed to wife ,son & daughter in law. Took 2 weeks to start feeling better but probably 6 weeks to get rid of virus properly but now fully recovered bike on bike & T/R. Must admit I
think I made a return a bit to early. I believe its called post virus fatigue. Hope I’ve not bored you to much.
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Its a bummer! I had the same in February, after visiting the world cx champs ( don’t know if it was covid, wasn’t tested) But I kept on training ,but legs felt tired for a few days. I’ve never experienced anything like it before, and it took a couple of months to get my sense of taste and smell back.
Hope you recover soon! 
41 male. consider myself in pretty top shape and health. covid in june/july. severe sickness for 3 days, with one of those nights being extremely ill. ill and very fatigued for 2 weeks. i had every symptom in the book over those weeks. no training for 3 weeks. lost about 15% of ftp. back to normal within about 6 weeks of restarting training. definitely didn’t feel like my lungs were back in those early weeks of getting back on the bike. in fact it felt odd. today i’m better than ever and hitting new ftp PRs.
It does come back for most people. After having it early September, I would say my taste is back 100% about now, with smell at 80%. Today I noticed (again) how much the dog smells. Every silver lining has a cloud…
Haha, I appreciate the encouragement. I’m optimistic and look forward to smelling my dog again, haha.
Thanks everyone for sharing your personal experiences. It give me some hope for getting back to normal
First covid symptoms in late March – it’s been exactly 9 months. Was 53 at the time. Symptoms seemed mostly mildish, and I attempted my first exercise about two weeks later. I’ve tried re-starting training of any sort many times over the past nine months, and now I finally have some traction with a light amount of semi-regular exercise. I have experienced many symptoms along the way and have been left with multiple chronic health problems from the virus. FTP doesn’t mean much to me any longer, but I’d guess I’ve dropped 50 watts or so. I’m a ways off of attempting any workout of the length and intensity as I did before covid but am slowly making headway.
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34 yo male. Took a test late October after having a mild sore throat and fever like symptoms and came back positive. Suffered from headaches, tiredness and nighttime fever for around 5 -7 days albeit these were fairly mild (continued working as normal after day 3) .
Didn’t really get on the bike until day around day 8 when I did an endurance ride. Found it was much more difficult than expected and HR was elevated by 10-15 bpm. I was slightly surprised by this as I didn’t suffer any respiratory symptoms. Now more or less back to where I was pre covid. Interestingly, my Apple Watch had my post COVID-19 vo2 max down by 10%.
My wife, 34 and generally healthy, tested negative for the virus and didn’t ever show any symptoms. She followed the guidance by staying at home but we didn’t attempt to ‘isolate’ from one another.
Pleased that most on this thread have come out of the other end doing okay. Hopefully the few that have had worse experiences will recover soon.
I think having a significant health issue puts a lot of things to in perspective. I hope your health continues to improve. It is good you are still riding and not letting the setback cause you to leave the bike altogether, that is tenacity.
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Update on my experience, 49 YO, 8 weeks after onset of symptoms:
- I was “sick” for 16 days, mostly just fever and tired. I was coughing for 8 of those days, severely for 1 day. The fatigue lasted for a solid two weeks after all symptoms were done. It was the type of tired that made me wonder if I would ever come back.
- Fortunately I have not had any serious long term health issues.
- My sense of smell remains diminished and my sense of taste is back but very different, I am liking foods I did not like before, my sweet tooth is worse and foods I used to like don’t appeal to me anymore. Unfortunately this is not re-balanced in a way to crave healthy foods, quite the opposite.
- First Ramp test was yesterday, no loss in power (which surprised me a lot).
- Heart rate roughly the same as before.
- Feeling generally good, although I managed to fall behind at work pretty far so that is a source of stress.
It is the nature of viruses that it will get passed around until the vaccine and herd immunity manage to isolate it. I hope if you all get it you manage to have a minimum impact experience.
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Cases ran through my household, starting with my toddler bringing it home from daycare. She had a fever for 3 days but only lethargy/fatigue for 1 and started to return to form on day 3 which is also when her fever finally quit. As she recovered I got knocked into bed on the Tuesday before xmas for a day with bad headache, body aches, fatigue and a fever. Took dayquil/nyquil and forced myself to eat and managed to have those symptoms last for only 24 hours. Did a super light recovery workout Dans the next day (Wednesday) as I believe very much in the healing power of light exercise when sick. Basically giving myself a mild fever on my own terms as I see it. Still had some aches in the knees but got through it without issue but then took 2 more days off thanks to some more fatigue. Managed to do a lazy mountain-2 on Saturday while watching some shows to good effect. Was a bit up and down with sleepy days that seemed to follow my exercise days but since then things have largely been on an upward trajectory. This week I planned my return to form(my workout week schedule is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday) starting with Pettit+1 on Monday, skipped Tuesday, Garrowby-3 on Wednesday which might have replaced mount field as my new favorite sweet spot come back system check. Then to check the Vo2 did Taylor-3 which is usually quite accessible for me. All in all went well but I concur with previous posts that heart rate was a bit higher than usual. Legs felt great, especially on garrowby, but heart rate was above the usual for 85-94% efforts and was a touch high for taylor-3 compared to the last time I did a taylor. I plan to do collins tomorrow morning as part of my normal saturday pre-breakfast endurance workout habit and we’ll see how that kind of stress hits me but I’m feeling like it’ll be fine. I’ll be getting back into week 4 of SSB2 on Monday, not with super high expectations but at least expecting to be able to continue as planned. Might find alternate Vo2 workouts since I’ve never gotten along well with 120% for longer than 2 minutes even when fully healthy. All in all I feel very fortunate to have been hit hard for only a day and orchestrating a graduated come back that seems to be working well.
My wife had mild symptoms, mild fever, nagging minor headache and that was about it there but the anosmia hit her pretty hard right around xmas which sucked because we opened a nice bottle of wine before we knew she couldn’t taste it. Saving the bottom of the bottle for when her taste returns which thankfully she was only fully without taste/smell for a few days and has been recovering those senses daily but slowly. At this rate hopefully it’ll fully be back late next week but mentally she’s been in a similar boat to @ciarrai up above, it’s been tough to try and keep her hopeful since she is a big wine and cooking enthusiast as well. Beer is somewhat of a saving grace in that regard since the bubbles and the bitter seemed to still make it through. Same for our new years eve meal which we paired with a cheap bottle of korbel extra dry bubbly. Sweet is slowly returning and with the bubbles it sort of simulates the flavor and puts it in the mind rather than actually tasting it fully. But we’re all on the mend and very thankful none of us had it any worse than we did.
Love to hear where you are now. I’m a 56yo and I was sick a solid 2.5 weeks in January21’. 3.5-4 weeks out walking up stairs leaves me lightheaded.
For me, the fatigue lasted a couple weeks after being sick. But I am feeling great now. My sense of smell is still reduced, my tastes in food are different but I am living like normal. If you only have fatigue and have shaken being sick, don’t get discouraged. You will probably turn a corner soon. Thankfully you aren’t one of the unfortunate few that needs hospitalization or worse.
Update - nearly 2 months later, I have recovered most of my smell/taste. Today I opened an old guitar case and remembered the smell from probably a decade ago, so I felt relieved. I am still missing certain “bad” smells like old milk or poo, so it’s not the worst thing in the world. Interestingly, I am one of those people who can’t eat cilantro because it smells/tastes like soap. The other night I had some street tacos loaded with cilantro and ate them no problem (although it tasted like nothing). Hopefully that change is permanent.
As far as fatigue/fitness, I really slacked off and am just restarting a training block, so my fitness is low but I think I’ve escaped any major problems.
I’m still <4 weeks out of a 2 week illness and still feel like I need a breather at top of stairs. May get CT of lungs to see if I have scaring, if doc supports request. I’ll just feel happier if I know.