After covid, how long before you were running normally again?

You need to get your blood volume back up. It will take a few days, gradually increasing the amount you sweat each day to encourage fluid retention to get back to your pre-covid level.

How is your breathing?

I didn't try running during the 8 days of my illness. It's too much to ask of your body. Best to rest and let your body clear the virus, then get back to running. You will be further ahead because you will be recovered. You won't lose fitness. You are basically running on empty right now. There is no upside to running while sick.

Breathing has been fine. I'm not really experiencing any respiratory issues aside from a very light cough which produces a small amount of phlegm.

I'm really not THAT sick. I've been doing 4-8 mile runs, but I don't feel good during them. The effort level is much higher than it should be.

I had lots of phlegm for a few weeks. But this is part of the recovery, it protects your lungs from irritants and nasty organisms.

I just called it my altitude training phase. You have to think positively. We are the lucky ones.

My dose was 3 days of weakness and 3 days of illness and a few weeks for full recovery.

I got symptoms August 10. Tested positive ugust 11. High fever and breathing problems for 2 days. Got medication that helped breathing. After 3 days fever was gone. I was in middle of nowhere and was able to do some light walks.

August 16 I started running again. Easy pace. Lots of cardiac drift. This went gradually better and i blended in some marathon pace.

September 5 I was able to do 10k repeats again. By that time my heart rate responded normally also.

Overall I lost about one week worth of mileage. Could have been worse.

That is not a very encouraging timeline. If it takes me 3-4 weeks before I'm doing workouts again, my November marathon goals are basically done.

But you had mild symptoms. If low blood volume is your biggest problem, you should be ok in a week or two. How hard were you training before your illness?

It was 8 months before I was running normally again. Your body decides, not your racing schedule.

I was training pretty hard prior to getting sick... 60-65 miles/week. Big track workouts, and 20-23 mile long runs.

In other words you were training a little too hard like me. So a bit of time off should have done you good.

I wasn't training too hard at all. That training volume/intensity was perfectly appropriate given my experience, competitive level, my build up, and stage of the training cycle.

But I do hope that in a few more days and I'll be back to normal.

It was not that bad.

I am running a marathon Oct 9 and so I pushed myself to do a 30k on august 19 or so. I could do sub threshold/marathon intensity 3 days after that. The big problem for me was the breating intensity. My lungs could not manage 2+2 steps until September 5. Got a nasty reaction when trying it late august. But I have asthma so it may go better in your case.

In all seriousness: Never do strenuous exercise while you still have the virus. Viruses can end up in the heart and do bad things to you.

Post-virus, understand that any exercise you're doing should be part of your recovery. Helpful: Take your waking pulse each morning. It should be consistently trending downward, or at worst holding steady.

🤦

This. A cautious return to training after a viral infection is the only sensible approach.

Trying to tough it out is foolish.

The bums got it, and the careful ones did not

When I had covid in 2020 I ran every day. I was nearly asymptomatic, and only had a very slight runny nose. I think everyone is different. Listen to your body.