My Time with Covid-19

After 2 years of managing to avoid the virus, I unfortunately contracted Covid-19 sometime over the weekend when I was racing Tryptique des Monts et Châteaux. It would explain why I was feeling a bit nauseous, and queasy on the final, double day of racing. Thankfully, my Covid-19 symptoms were relatively mild ones. I’m grateful for that, I know a lot of people have struggled. On Writing this my symptoms are far lighter than the monday immediately after the race concluded.

 

A Timeline of events:

I’ve no clue when or how I came across the virus, but I was certainly feeling off from Sunday morning. I had woken with an aching neck, specifically the trapezius and splenius capitis, Sport Science Student I’ve got to put it to use somehow. My stomach was feeling very queasy all day, but was particularly evident when eating lunch at ~12pm. I couldn’t eat as much as what was I was advised by Charlie Mitten for a big energy expenditure day on the bike.

The events that came after the race, certainly provided a hindsight explanation for why I bonked quite spectacularly on the final lap of the hilly day of racing. Something wasn’t right, and it was my target to understand the reasons – over the course of the next two weeks – for my last day collapse from the front of the race, where I believe I should have been competing.

On Wednesday I was testing positive some 3 days after I first experienced the symptoms of the virus. This was the peculiar thing because the day I was feeling at my worst was the day my test was negative.

I came home from the Chopper House on Wednesday evening to isolate in my room, so I could ensure optimal rest and quick recovery so I could return to training and soon competition as quickly as is safely possible. My Parents, who remained more than 2m away helped me with food and left it at the foot of my door, whilst equipped with masks and continuous handwashing. Love them greatly for helping me out the past week or so.  

Staying in your room for 5 days can get draining, thankfully the weather wasn’t all bad, so I could have very good ventilation from outside with the windows gaped open. Despite this fresh air, during the early moments of the self-induced isolation, I slipped back into some poor habits, notably with my phone and screen time watching YouTube and Netflix in bed. Clearly my search of breaking up the boredom hadn’t quite broken, and the social media’s algorithms still had their control over me.

I recognised this and proceeded to watch the Social Dilemma again, some 2 years since it was first released. How those 2 years have gone by. How I’ve changed a lot since watching that documentary for the first and second times. It’s powerful one for sure. But after a few days, of being useless, I started getting on with things and get my act together, notably with university work and building things like my website and it gave me an opportunity to continue to create cool project I’ve been wanting to do for a while now.

I’m now close to the other side of this virus, although I am still feeling the effects in my chest and haziness in my head at the end of the days. Just ticking off the days making sure I get rid of this virus effectively and totally so there is no side-effects later on in the year.

Having had this hindsight that I may have been racing on a developing Covid-19 viral load at Tryptique Monts et Châteaux I can be very, very happy with the results I obtained that weekend. This gives me motivation to push through this self-imposed isolation period to set up the future I want to achieve and come back how I want to… in the best way possible.

Thanks to Mini Discar Cycling Team for that phenomenal weekend of racing it was such a massive learning experience. Thanks to Jasper for pulling a massive result that weekend it was great to see mate, can’t wait until the next one. Thanks to Charlie, Jon and Paul for having my back and offering me advice on what is best to do going forward from this. Thanks to Pedal Potential for the continued support,

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