I did weekly updates on my recovery from COVID19 on Facebook, and I probably should have done them here too, so here they are:

Nov 13
10 miles on the bike this morning. It was my seventh consecutive day of riding. Reviewing the stats from the week’s rides confirmed what I already knew: I got slower each day. Either I’m getting worse, or am doing more than my body can recover from. I have downloaded a home pulmonary rehab exercise video. I’m going to use it, instead of riding, for now. We’ll see how I do.

Nov17
It’s now been two weeks since I was released from the hospital. I’ve had no gain in lung function at all so far. I’m getting used to slow walking. If I stand up and walk at my normal pace, I’m out of breath by the time I get across the room. But after three weeks, my sinuses have almost quit bleeding, so I guess that’s progress. Baby steps….

Nov 22
Tuesday will mark three weeks since I got out of the hospital, and I’m finally seeing the first hint of lung function improvement. For those of you who’ve never used one, an incentive spirometer is for measuring the volume of air you can breathe into your lungs. From the beginning of my hospital stay, I’d only been able to hit 1500 ml on the spirometer. On my bad days, I could only do 1200. The last couple of days, I’ve been hitting 2000. That’s still a pretty pathetic reading for someone my size, but it’s a gain, the start of what I hope will be a lot more gains.

Dec 1
Today marks four weeks since I was released from the hospital. I’m doing 2250 on the spirometer now. Looking at the chart, that’s not much below normal for someone my age and height. But I still have shortness of breath, so it’s obviously not just a volume thing. It’s likely a lung tissue damage thing, too. I’m going to keep on patiently working to get stronger. I’ve started riding again, doing ten miles on the bike yesterday. I just picked a nice flat route on Rouvy. I don’t think I could pedal myself up much of a hill right now, either on a real road or on Rouvy. I had been doing my pulmonary rehab exercises pretty much every day (though I did take off the two days I went fishing last week), but I’ll probably just do them on the days I don’t ride now.
I was semi-retired when I got sick, still working a few hours most weeks. I’d like to get back to work, but I don’t think I’m ready just yet. Maybe in a week or two.

Dec 8
Today makes five weeks since I got out of the hospital. I am now doing 2500 ml on the spirometer. By the chart, that’s normal for someone my age and height, but I can tell I would have been doing more than that before I got sick. I rode the bike 10 miles last Monday, 15 miles on Wednesday, and 16 miles on Friday. Saturday night, I went out and danced my arse off. I even managed to do every line dance without getting too out of breath. So, while I’m nowhere near my peak cycling fitness level, I do seem to at least be functional now. I think I’m going to go back to work next week.

And those were my Facebook updates. It’s now December 19th. I ended up not working this week. The only job I had scheduled postponed until after New Year’s. I’ll turn 70 in April, so I guess if I end up just retiring, that wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen. I have stopped doing the pulmonary rehab exercises and am now just riding and doing my core exercises. It seemed like I was no longer gaining anything from pulmonary rehab.

I’m doing 20 mile rides now. I’ve ramped up my distance and effort slowly. Severe cases of COVID19 have caused heart damage very often, and that was scary to me, especially since the most frequent damage is diastolic dysfunction, and I had already been diagnosed with moderate diastolic dysfuntion. But I haven’t seen any evidence of new heart damage in my case yet. Up until this week, I limited my heart rate to under 140 on my rides, and I’m still limiting it to under 150.

Truth be told, that’s really not any different than my normal winter riding. I always ease up effort and distance in the winter. I treat it like a recovery period, and start ramping up my effort again in the spring. And I ended up with over a 16 mph average on the bike on two of my rides this week. That’s very good for me, even on a flat route, when I’m only putting out an easy to moderate effort, even in past years. That’s very encouraging. It means that, for easy to moderate winter efforts, I’m getting the same results I have for years. Of course, if I really put out a high intensity effort, either on or off the bike, I have really bad shortness of breath in short order, a reminder that I’m not nearly fully recovered. But, I’ll take encouraging news where I find it.

In past years, I’ve tried to hit peak fitness in August, in time for the Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred. But I’ll turn 70 before the next one. If you’re past 70, should you still be on the road mixing it up with 10,000+ other cyclists in a 100 mile event? I’m not sure I’m ready to answer that one. And that’s ignoring the fact that I don’t know if I’ll ever even be fit enough to complete another 100 mile bike ride. But, I’ll worry about all that at a later date. Right now, I’m reasonably pleased with my progress. I rode 80 miles this week. I was pretty tired the last half of today’s 20 miles, but just being able to ride 80 miles in a week shows a real improvement in my endurance, which hasn’t been good at all since I got sick. I’ll keep working on that.

Yesterday’s Rouvy route.