COVID and lingering effects on fitness

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6 months later and still waiting on smell to come completely back.

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Hearing shite like this freaks me out.

I had what I thought was a bad case of the flu back in early 2020. It was probably undiagnosed COVID. I lost taste but it came back.

I had childhood asthma and still have flare-ups every now and then, so my lungs have never been the best. It took 3-4 months to get back to a decent level of cardiovascular fitness after COVID, but I don't think I have ever gotten back to where I was just before I caught it, and my heart rate reflects that.

Whoop is great.

I have data going back to mid June last year.

Had COVID in late April into May

Front squatting 225 x 5 today

Trap bar deadlifted 510 x 3 Monday

Strength has been fine

Conditioning was rough the first week back full at it a couple weeks ago

Wife had a mild case, like a mild cold, for about 36 hours. She is a competitive cyclist like me and we both track our fitness in multiple objective ways. She only missed 3 days on the bike but lost 15% of her FTP (functional threshold power). A year later she is still about 5% below pre-COVID FTP number and is still down about 100w off her max sprint power, She has put more miles on in the last year than any year in the last 5 along with doing more of the brutal intervals I do that she usually demurs. She also spent more time in the squat rack and is statically stronger than she has been in over 10 years. Maybe 10% of our cycling friends who had COVID report similar issues. She has access to most every heart diagnostic known to man and she can't find any issues of concern but she has seen some worrying things in her practice. She has replaced two valves in relatively young unusually fit (to see her table) people which the only reasonable conclusion was the damage was secondary to COVID. Understand these are outliers though.

It has been very frustrating for her especially this year as racing has resumed. She should be much stronger than she is given all the extra effort she put in last year.

I had COVID in January and it took ~3 months before I started feeling like my old self again.

I just couldn't sustain anything. Heavy lifts were fine, but if a WOD required my lungs, I was fricked. My sustained running pace (like what ive run a 5k at) is 4 breaths in, 4 breaths out. On running WODs I couldn't get all 4 breaths in, the capacity wasn't there. I have exercise-induced asthma, and it felt like an asthma attack without the wheezing.

Now, 6 months later, I feel better than I was pre-covid. But those first 3 months were rough. I started to worry about permanent damage.

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Whoop — is it an app? Website? Device??

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Yes

No, I never fully lost my taste or smell, although some things definitely taste different now.

I personally lost all sense of smell and basically all taste. I could taste "sweet" or "salty" but there was zero flavor other than that. It was bizarre.

Losing sense of smell wasn't badz especially since we were in the thick of potty training my kid at the time