Welcome and season planning podcast
I caught Covid. Let's cue it out in trow. The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long chavages? That is the question, this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Row Man, welcome back. It's Monday, it's another roadman cycling podcast. Thank you for joining me. I'm sitting in quite a, I'm basically sitting in a building site where in the middle of starting to bring the roadman podcast in video, both the early stages of that is studio and set design. And that's what's going on all around me at the moment. And it's literal chaos of cables and warriors everywhere, light domes hanging overhead, painting the taffd on, wires hanging down, it's chaos. This week's Secret Podcast, or should I say the most recent episode of the Secret Podcast, I talked about what goal you should set. It was actually a really enjoyable podcast because it's one of the questions I get asked. Most traditional periodization does not work if you're balanced and family work, social obligations, etc. So in this Secret Podcast, I break down exactly how how you should structure your season. It doesn't make more sense to go and do a whole shoot during the summer or a New Yorker 3.12, or if you're targeting the crit champs in the hill climb, how do you build that perfect season? That's exactly what I talk about in this week's perfect secret podcast. Not quite a perfect podcast, but it's getting there to access the secret podcast. As always, it'll cost you the price of a point of beer once a month. If you're enjoying what I do and you wanna support the podcast and you wanna get access to the secret podcast, All you have to do is head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch the link to do that is in the description. It's patreon P A T or E O N dot com forward slash A N T H O N Y underscore watch. And you're going to love that one. And there's a new one coming to you every week. And once you subscribe for that price of a fiver a month, you will get access to the podcast as long as you continue to support the podcast. So today, as the title suggests, I didn't talk about this too much on the podcast. I briefly covered it. So I was in Toronto before Christmas and I went there for a block, actually quite a big block. I ended up staying there for almost five weeks. You know, if you listen to the podcast, I absolutely loved your own. I was out there for almost five weeks. When I intended to come home, I went to get a test. day I intended to travel or two days before I intended to travel and I was positive for COVID-19 and you know hands up I'd known but myself to blame for that on one of my rest days big block so compromised immunity one of my rest days it was a friend's birthday we ended up having some beers then restrictions were a lot lighter in Spain than at the time we ended up having a late night gone to the nightclub packed nightclub tink you know Dublin's busiest nightclub on New Year's they've completely packed. I can only assume I caught COVID. They're pretty much deserved to catch it if you ask me. Some people are like, Oh, I don't know how I caught COVID. I'm pretty much 100% sure how I caught COVID. So that nightclub, it didn't voice too bad for me. Like I knew I was sick. But if I had a job where I was working outdoors, a construction job or something like that, there was basically only one day that I would have called in sick where I had a high fever, I had a headache and I generally felt pretty miserable. So I had a very mild experience with COVID. I had a bit of a nightmare getting home and I only made it back to Dublin for Christmas Eve. But what I want to talk about actually is the after effects of COVID because this is something that's affecting me at the moment. It's something that's affecting quite a lot of clients that we're coaching and I know it's affecting quite a lot of listeners because I have got a number of direct messages on Instagram saying, hey, I'm just coming back from COVID and I'm experiencing X, Y and Z.
COVID return-to-training guidelines
What should I do? So I wanted to put the research on, do a little bit of research and come back to you guys with my experience and also what some of the research is saying. So if you have caught COVID right now, you know, the general guidelines, they'll be, They'll differ depending on where you are, but generally it's 10 days until you're symptom-free and that's the acute phase of COVID. That's not really what we want to talk about. Assuming you have no lingering symptoms after that, after your symptoms are completely gone, you should wait seven days and then return into a training to train phase. So don't jump straight back into a VO2 block. Jump back into a training to train phase. The main thing here is to listen to your body. But if your body is telling you, hey, this isn't good, I don't feel normal. You fall into one of two categories. So you could have something called long COVID, which we've heard a lot of people talking about and long COVID has been, you know, just celebrities and stuff talking about long COVID. Long COVID seems to affect people with large amounts of adipose tissue. So if you're carrying a decent amount of excess body weight, people seem to be a lot more prone to catching long COVID. I can't exactly remember the mechanism for a book. COVID lives longer than those adipose cells. The main symptom that you will notice if you have long COVID is extreme levels of fatigue. Your sleep along, you wake up after a full night sleep or you're tired again, your nap and productivity is low, it's generally fatigue. But there's a second category which I feel, I know I've fallen into and a lot of our clients have fallen into and quite a few listeners have fallen into. So it's not long COVID, it's another type of COVID that's affecting predominantly athletes, post being affected by SARS COVID-19. And that is chest pain. So if you have chest pain, if you have shortness of breath, whether it's like a dull, droning chest pain or a sharp chest pain, or any sort of heart arrhythmia, there's one study I see and it was shown that, and it wasn't a brilliant study, it was shown that one quarter of all athletes who had COVID, short signs of myocarditis, post-COVID, but this study actually didn't correct for how many athletes might have myocarditis anyway, which the baseline figure definitely isn't zero. So it's difficult to know how much to read into that one quarter of all athletes who had COVID go on to get myocarditis stat, but we definitely know from that stat it is a number greater than zero, and anecdotally I know it's a number greater than zero. And I know myself, I've been suffering with it. So my main thing is I'm getting elevated resting heart rate. My normal resting heart rate is around 32 to 36 in the mornings if I'm not on a rest week, but not a super heavy training block around that. I'm finding at the moment I'm resting 10 beats higher than that. On the bike, almost as soon as I throw my leg over the bike, I'm seeing my heart rates 30, 40 beats higher, almost always. So endurance rides, I'm up where I should be like 110, I'm riding at 140, anytime, any sort of zone two, zone three, I'm up a threshold, right? And if I do have to ride a threshold for whatever reason, I'm basically doing a VO2 capacity effort. Listening to my body, I would know something is badly wrong. So I've reached out and I've talked to some pro-roiders and I've talked to some pro-doctors and it is a problem in all levels of cycling at the moment. I have a teammate who has very similar symptoms and he is off the bike as well at the moment. So world tour doctors are taking this very seriously and there's a battery test that they're pouring Reuters through post-COVID to see if they're fit to return to competition and fit to return to training. But generally you're looking for 10 days of all symptoms of stopped. So that's 10 days of chest pain, heart arrhythmia, shortness of breath, 10 days for all that have stopped before you return to light training. If you have repeated symptoms or you're getting more chest pain or anything like that after the 10 day break, then it's time to go in and get further examination.
Ignoring my own advice
Now all this is great, but I just didn't listen to my own advice. I've had an elevated heart rate. I've known on the bike for, what do we know? Second week of February, heading into the second week of February, and I have known for all that time that I don't feel good. In my training diary every morning, I say, don't feel good, don't feel myself. I have had chest pains all along, very, very mild, but there's still chest pains. At one point, you're kind of like, oh, did I pull it? I did a strain of peck bench pressing, but you're just I'm really I'm telling myself stories because I don't want to go and deal with an issue which I Blattingly should go and deal with and that's why I was a little bit reluctant to make this podcast because I know as I was reluctant to make the podcast because it's fucking embarrassing that I haven't gone and got this Sorted but then I decided to make the podcast because I feel like there's so many people in this same situation situation now and We're just so driven as athletes even though I don't have any you know super high performance goals for myself This is in beyond you know racing and join riding my bike and join racing my bike I Still never have a day that goes past where I'm not like how can I progress my fitness? How can I progress my physique? How can I progress how I'm feeling and Honestly cycling and sport is such a mental health outlet for me as well that I've been just so reluctant to ease off the gas and potentially go and get an MRI scan that says you need to take two three months off because that's just a challenge I've never had to cope with before. So that's why I've been putting it off. It makes absolutely no sense. It's classic heading to sand stuff because I've advised teammates and I've advised clients to do differently and they all been voicing you but went back out on the roadman spin on Saturday and again just feeling It's totally terrible on the bike, like nothing like myself. And it's not a case of rustiness, just feeling absolutely like dog shit. So I have actually taken the plunge and said, you know what, I'm not riding the bike until this is sorted. So I am gonna go to the GP today and I'm gonna take action on this. And this podcast exposes a little way to make me accountable to you, but it's also kick up the hold that if you are experiencing somebody's symptoms, just go and get it sorted. The worst thing that's gonna happen is you're going to have an honest look at where you're standing right now. And the best thing that's gonna happen, you're gonna get it all clear and you can go back to training straight away, guilt free, put your conscience at rest. Well, man, that's my rant. I haven't had to do a podcast like this where I've just been totally vulnerable. Put my hands up and said, you know what, I fucked up. I showed a sort of this 10 days ago. And everyone's been on that, me to say, to get a sort of girlfriend, been at me, parents have been at me. And I was like, you know what, I'll just give it a week. And I did give it, I gave it more than a week. I gave it 10 full days off the bike away from exercise, bar walking. And then came back and rode the roadman group spin on Saturday and the symptoms were as bad as, if not worse than they previously had been. So today I was just like, you know what, this just needs to get sorted. So it's gonna get sorted and I will keep you posted on that journey. Roman, thank you for tuning in. We've got some stellar guests coming up this week, including Mr. J. Vaughn tomorrow from Alpason Fenix. So I hope you look forward to that one. This week we have interviews on Tuesday and we have interviews on Thursday. Super pumped to bring you both them. Tomorrow's J. Vaughn, and back on Wednesday it was solo cast. Roman, thank you for tuning in. And you know what? I'm gonna chat to you again tomorrow.