Hello all,
My second time with covid, this time seems much milder.
Have the guidelines about coming back to training evolved in the last year or two? The new covid variants are milder, I wonder if it’d be advisable to ride even if it is only one hour of the event.
Cheers,
M
Hey there,
Sorry to hear about the COVID case – bummer that it’s a couple of weeks before your A event. 
The guidelines around returning to exercise when recovering from COVID have remained the same. You’ll want to rest up and recover fully, then give it another week once you start to feel “good” again to make sure you’re back to 100% before you begin putting your body through the stress of exercise once more.
This is a tough timeline given how close you are to your A event, which definitely sucks. It isn’t advisable to ride at all if you haven’t recovered from COVID. You’d risk worsening your own condition due to the illness, and you’d also risk spreading the virus to others if you were to go to the event – which obviously isn’t cool!!
As with any medical situation, we’d recommend discussing the matter with your doctor for further clarification or advice if needed. Wishing you a speedy recovery!
It more likely that you have some immunity, not that the variants are milder. Either way rest up till you feel good.
Would 100% heed the recommendations posted by @ZackeryWeimer . Long COVID is still a thing (ask my wife who has yet to recover her sense of taste and smell after her second bout of COVID 5 months ago).
The timing sucks obviously, but in the end, it is better to miss a race than screw with your long-term health.
I’d back off, gutting to ruin your A event but even worse to ruin a whole summer, health is wealth.
Health stuff is very personal when it comes to risk/reward, so it’s really your question to answer. Personally, I’d take it easy for now and see how it plays out. I’m s fan of “listen to your body”, so I’d probably race if feeling good in days leading up, pass if I still feel like I’m recovering. What I absolutely would not do - worry about fitness between now and the race.
For me, a 1 hour event makes the decision a little easier. A 1 hour race would likely be pretty intense, but it isn’t a big physiological load (assuming you typically train much longer/harder efforts). So I’d be less concerned about further compromising immune system, depleting energy stores, etc. Coming off illness, I’d feel much better about jumping into a 1 hour race vs. a 5+ hour race that can beat you down a bit even when totally healthy.
The event wasn’t a one hour race but rather I was thinking… Since everything is paid for, I might just chill and ride one hour out of the 5 or 6 and then make it back on a bus or taxi or the organisers car… It’s a beautiful place and I’ll meet a few friends at the finish line eventually
I had COVID probably 3 weeks ago now, it lasted 3 days and wasn’t at all that bad. However I have noticed my lungs/chest/throat feel a bit “limited”. Nothing specific I can put my finger on, but having only lost perhaps 4 days training, some sessions feel like I have lost 2 months of fitness. Legs feel ok, just feel like I’m drowning in saliva and that my lungs aren’t quite doing what I’d expect of them.
Nothing that’s stopping me training, and nothing that would stop me competing but I’d just be mindful I’m probably not absolutely 100%.
So I think if you accept you might not perform quite as you were pre-covid and so long as you’re up and about like you would be normally aside from training, then I’d go for it.
I’ve had it (confirmed) twice now, it took me off the bike for 3 days the first tiem around and 2 weeks the second time. Listen to your body and trust it. If you feel any lingering fatigue or respiratory distress, shut it down. Other races will come.
I came down with some sort of sickness 3 days before my A race (2.5 hr XC race). I decided to race since my symptoms didn’t feel global (sore throat and cough but no fatigue or fever). My race went horribly and now the day after, I feel much worse. Really wish I would’ve just skipped the race but hindsight is 20/20. My fitness was at an all time high and I had my worst result in the last couple of years.
If a result is going to determine if it was a success, maybe just skip it. If you’re doing it for the experience of it all and don’t mind scaling expectations, maybe go for it.
They SEEM milder, yet people are still dying from it, and the number dying is varying too. Some of those ‘milder’ variants are still killing quite a few people. I read an article written by a virologist, and they said that it’s a matter of time before another wicked variant pops up. But we will be so used to ignoring it, that mass quantities will not survive it. I certainly hope they are wrong as I’ve lost enough people to the virus, but I do keep an ear to the ground, so to speak, just in case.
If you are experiencing any respiratory symptoms, I’d wave it off if you are ‘old’, or have some preexisting condition that might be a good time to sit that one out. It does seem that ‘the usual suspects’ are falling with the new variants. The last time I had the ‘vid’, I was out for over 2 weeks. Wheezing, and just feeling like I had a bad day, the whole time. But, I’m old.
If you are young, keep an ear to the news, but be grateful for your youth. RIDE ON!!
I’m 46, that’s not OLD but not young either… I’ll just not ride the event and do some chill zone 1 to see the sights I guess
And researchers believe that it’s possible that people who have been infected with a covid variant are acquiring different kinds of cancers. That the cancers are hitting younger people, and an article said were more aggressive and harder to treat.
It’s not unusual for a viral infection to cause cancer, but in these instances there is no other known issue that goes through such an apparently large number of patients. There is a lot more left to discover for the covid virus and variants for sure…