[RandomWorker]

That sucks. My experience was to get back to training fairly soon (2 weeks after fever went away). After that training session I knew I should rest more and took an additional 2 weeks off. Then built back up my regular training starting at 10% volume and increasing at 10% increases each week. After 3 months I was back to regular volume. My suggestion is that everyone take at least two weeks off, and build up volume very conservatively. I’ve had lots of conversations with other people that love to train. It’s hard to take it easy and do less because we love training, but this protocol seems to work for many. Maybe it’s too conservative and everyone is different.

[dTal]

If you were "training" 2 weeks after the fever went away, congratulations - you didn't have long covid.

You cannot exercise your way out of Long Covid, or other postviral fatigue syndromes - it presents identically to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Any attempt to exercise - even something as small as a short walk, or in severe cases merely taking a shower - results in a hard crash that feels completely unlike exercise fatigue, and can effectively confine you to bed for days. And every time you provoke a crash, you set back your recovery, potentially permanently. And you can't really tell by feel what your limits are, you just have to work it out analytically and be conservative. And the whole time, your brain feels like mush.

It's really no joke.

[journey_16162]

I think there's something in-between though.

I have been sick for 1.5 weeks (which is an extreme time for me by itself), afterwards I did not feel quite normal and got right back to being sick just after a few days, progressively getting worse. After another 1.5 weeks, I almost felt normal, only super-tired, I got to rest all day, only to wake up in the night feeling sick again. Another 5 days went by, to get back to the point where I feel tired but not sick and again, I went back to feeling generally unwell, although it may be better than the last time. It goes for 4 weeks now.

Most recently, I woke up, felt sick right there in the morning, feeling like I should rest rather than work but with great mental exertion I overrode it and carried a full day, with little to no rest, every minute pushing against that feeling and doing some light exercise too. At the end of the day, I felt like I did not sleep the entire night and as I went to sleep, I slept like a stone. The day after I got that tiredness feeling without feeling sick I wrote about earlier - which felt like progress.

I don't have extreme tiredness like you describe, but something is clearly wrong and it cut my weekly work capacity by half. I never had something like. I also have been hearing about friends of friends also feeling unwell for 1 month or 2 months.

[journey_16162]

Actually, I have long covid. The sick feeling / malaise were some sort of early PEMs I think. Soon afterward, after I pushed it a bit too much with no awareness on the issue, I had a huge crash that did not feel like being sick, more like beign drained from all energy. I used to work a bit and play a video game when I was sick previously, now I am not able to watch more than 1h of a movie without resting.

My whole life is suspended. I hope I will get to recover. I will try to rest as much as I can. I believe I got this because I was working while being sick. Who the fuck know something like this was possible. They should fucking teach about this in school... don't work while you are sick or risk ending up disabled. Instead most doctors don't even know such illness exist.

[jupp0r]

It's kind if important whether you develop long covid or not. If you don't then you don't need a long break, if you do, you could be out for months or forever.

[ggm]

And, exercise makes it worse for some people. So "push through" is a possibly terrible idea.

[psychphysic]

Seems like long COVID and CFS are being conflated here.

[dTal]

Not really, they're basically the same thing. Except hopefully you (eventually) recover from long covid. If you don't recover, it's medically indistinguishable.

Like CFS, "pushing through" can worsen symptoms - permanently.

[psychphysic]

One very troublesome aspect of that stats is that changes to sense of smell are tracked as long COVID.

It quite invalidates the figures

[journey_16162]

It's been 4 weeks since I got sick and I still feel tired and unwell, but it's not anything as extreme as not being able to take a short walk, I even did some lightweight cardio-type exercise and there are days where I can be working almost all day (pushing through). I'm not sure what I should do and I will try to research it, but I feel like I have to push as much as I can while allowing more rest (i.e. 10h/day sleep, 1h nap in the mid day) until I'm well and trying do some lightweight cardio every day and a short walk. Reading the comments I have some fears that I could make worse / permanent though.

[spamizbad]

That's a very smart approach, and one my cyclist friend used when recovering from COVID in June of 2020. Took it easy for the rest of the year and put up some good numbers in 2021 and had his best year in 2022.