Running recovery post-covid

Where are you?

Traditional medicine doesn't know what to do about long Covid. This is where I would turn to alternative medicine, but long covid is so varied that alternative therapies are all over the place. I've read that long covid is being treated successfully by a type of stem cell therapy, but I don't remember what it was.

My covid cases (2) were similar to yours. Both were very mild. Alpha left me with breathing issues (three months). Omicron left me with fatigue (two weeks).

In both cases, I resorted to supplements that anecdotally have been linked to success in treating respiratory infections, flu, and weakened immune systems. Think about it. Your immune system has been severely stressed. First, by running a half marathon. Then, your weakened immune system left you more susceptible to covid and long covid.

In my opinion, and this is only an opinion, your immune system needs help. I would suggest the following daily supplements. Vitamin D3+K2 (5,000+ IU D3/day), zinc, C, Quercetin, melatonin, Lauricidin, and for the breathing, Cordyceps. Cordyceps definitely helped my breathing issues with Alpha covid. I still take it before workouts. Lauricidin has lots of testimonials for Epstein Barr Virus (EBV), chronic fatigue syndrome, and I think, even Lime disease. I've been taking Lauricidin for about 7 years for EBV and it definitely works for me.

Of course, you can always do nothing, which is what the supplement skeptics would suggest. Personally, as long as there is little to no risk in taking these supplements, I'd err on the side of taking them all. Your call.

You are not alone. I started with symptoms on April 25. Cold symptoms and frequent cough resolved about 1 week later. Similar symptoms to you, except I cough to gagging after I run and get severe chills and body aches after I run lasting 24 hours. Decided today not to run until I go 1 week without chills, body aches or cough. Pretty certain running is preventing my recovery

Unkle, DanM, SteveTheAddict, carmine9 told me Covid doesn’t do anything though

It’s possible you were overtraining relative to your fitness up until that half PR. Sometimes it feels like you’ve worked your way up to a certain levels of fitness and training intensity because you’ve been doing it fine for several weeks, but then it hits your body and then you, often by way of illness and slow recovery or illness relapse that that intensity was just not sustainable. Doesn’t have to be covid, even a sinus infection, flu, common cold etc.

Is it possible that you are expecting peak fitness all year round? No one’s body is like that. Try taking some time off and then slowly work your way back up to peak.

You’re not alone.. I had an extremely similar experience. I’m in college and ran 13:50 and 3:41 this year, and then got covid about 3 weeks ago. I had really bad symptoms for a few days (chills, aches, cough, stuffed up) and HR was higher than normal, didn’t run for 3 days. I have tried running each day since taking those days off, and I have not felt normal once. I still have trouble breathing, HR is a bit higher, and i feel a slight chest pain. Safe to say, something is off. This has derailed my season and I’m not going to be able to run NCAA regionals because of this.

My high heart rate was just dehydration and loss off fitness. I don't think I have long covid or lung damage.

Where I live there are suddenly lots of cases.

Do you feel/see in running metrics off? I've tried explaining it to my wife and cant do so well - feels like my lungs arent being efficient and my entire body is just off. So when people tell me to run to feel it's still there as its a whole body thing.

I'm going to try and see if I can get a chest scan or something, but so far the doctors I've spoken to (officially or a family member unofficialy) all come back to me being "fine" in that day to day life is managable, running isn't really a big concern. Every day the thought of the bill to get everything checked out seems more and more reasonable.

Supplements, good sleep, good food. Maybe take a few days completely off from running. Just go for a walk or easy bike ride, stretch.

Let your body clear whatever it needs and reduce the inflammation.

good list, there are about a half dozen more

Can you elaborate if you’ve had the vax or not? I’m serious. Thanks.

Bump. I'm young, got the vax, and got infected in late January when I was in near-PR shape. It felt like the flu - slight fever, chills, night sweats, minor body aches, cough, and a 15 bpm higher resting HR. Main symptoms lasted for about a week. I actually raced that week (bad idea) since I already paid the entry fee back in December and was about 30"/mile slower than my PR.

I gradually recovered after 2 weeks of sub-par runs. Running is mostly but not fully back to normal. My resting HR is back to normal, my volume is back to normal (85-90% of my lifetime peak mileage without too much fatigue), my tempo and long run paces are back to normal, and my 200-400m sprint speed is very close to normal.

But I've simply lost the ability to run fast 800s-3200s. I can sustain mile PR pace for maybe 600m and have absolutely nothing left after that. I have no idea why.