[Closed] Whose kerbed their cycle training with covid-19?

I'm still doing mine, as I need to be doing something for my mental and physical health.  My coaching company though has and "Entry" coaching level of 1/3 the price though and I've been asked to drop to that - its basically a 5 monthly period plan monitored by my coach in lieu of a monthly plan and communication sessions - but alleviates a financial issue.   As this will be the same coach I've had for 2 years and my knowledge together it'll allow me to maintain.

I've made great gains this year having finally found what works for me and although its a great shame to waste it, if life does go back to normal with regards to racing next year I want to carry this through.

I am taking multi vitamins and using SIS Immune in a bottle once every training day, and trying for plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Still training, still riding. Not as hard as some but fairly hard for me

Curbed?

Very much so, I was doing ~14 hours a week from 1st Jan until 27th Feb (when mild "manflu19" system began) with a fair bit of z4+ power, since then it's dropped to ~7 hours and I rarely go above z3. All the above includes ~2.5 hours of pootle commuting each week until I started self-isolation after Tuesday shift.

It's almost deja-vu from last year, seeing all my winter turbo gains fade away due to lurgy. 🙁

Middle-aged diabetic with slightly "reactive" airways here - and I work in a hospital

Keeping fit but I've stopped "training"

We are still cycling for the mental health benefits. (the other half has paperwork) Our biggest risk is a communal stair and some of our neighbours who we know are vulnerable and most likely to be a bit slack with the personal hygiene. We have upped our bannister cleaning and notice that the distancing effects of Mental health issues mean there is not much change from "our" normal. I think that is going to be the follow up crisis to this.

I am beginning to wonder whether said training will no doubt compromise the immune system for periods after long endurance rides and whether it’s best to pull the plug on anything too strenuous.

I use an app called ithlete ( http://myithlete.com) to monitor HRV every morning - think a more sophisticated version of checking resting heart rate - which I find a useful way of monitoring recovery and general well being. Things I've found at that what hammers you (or me at any rate) are high intensity sessions and, particularly, high intensity on consecutive days.

Long, steady endurance rides actually have significantly less impact than shorter, very intense interval sessions. It's the intensity that hits you harder particularly if you're not fully recovered. Quite a lot of training plans will do this deliberately to encourage over-reaching and improvement, but if you're worried about stressing your immune system, maybe best to throttle back on repeated intense stuff.

Bear in mind too that stress and lack of sleep are key factors in recovery, so if the current situation is freaking you out, you may not be recovering as well as normal anyway.

I don't really have any particular targets this year bar the Fred Whitton, which I suspect ain't going to happen, so I've taken a conscious decision to throttle back on intensity a little, but not completely eliminate it. I also find it hard to motivate myself to train for nothing, so mostly just riding my bike in a mindful way and enjoying being outside.

If you have a coach, I'd talk to him/her about your concerns though.

Also, I've seen a study cited several times that suggests regular cyclists in their 50s have the immune system of a much younger person. Sure, elite cyclists who are on the ragged edge a lot apparently have a tendency to depress their immune systems during training cycles, but they're pushing an awful lot harder than even keen amateurs.

Some training will help the immune system, absolutely hammering it can have an adverse effect. My motivation (for getting ready for the Badger Divide in May) has taken a serious hit, but I’m still making sure I get something in

Speaking to a few docs they have ALL said reduce high intensity training, your body will need all its reserves to fight this bug.

Of course the reverse of that is no exercise doesn’t help either.

So therefore training is bad, moderate exercise is good

As above, not doing anything that will stress my systems heavily but making sure to get out and keep it up.  Not any sort of athlete but want to be in the best shape possible if i get it as im a bit older and lungs might be at risk.  Motivation is the biggest problem really

Deffo reduce intensity, I did a fast road ride a few days ago. Only short and thought I wasn’t taking the piss. Anyway, woke up with a sore throat the next day and now bricking it a bit. Fingers crossed it’s nothing

When folk are taking about high intensity, how high are you taking about? I’m at home on the turbo, average workout of around an hour, averaging 140bpm, occasional visits north of 160. Am I increasing risk? (35 tomorrow, type 1 diabetic with a resting HR around 90)

Sadly I can’t really drop that intensity, those are ‘workouts’ that rarely get above 100w, ironically as I haven’t ridden much for 18months

When folk are taking about high intensity, how high are you taking about?

That's a good question that I too would like to try and understand. My coach has got me still doing FTP tests and VO2 max tests which I am sure are certainly high intensity.

Given that this looks set to rumble on for months I am beginning to think that this year from a bike packing / cycle touring perspective is a write off and therefore not really sure what point there is going out and doing 4+ hour rides.

When I said high intensity I was thinking anything above threshold/anaerobic/ inducing muscle pain tbh. I’m not an expert but those efforts deffo have correlated in the past with me getting a cold, especially if combined with any alcohol!

Surprised this thread has got under the radar of the "there should be a lockdown" brigade"...

Hour a day of fairly intense stuff, not sure at what point the immunity is affected adversely, but I’d imagine the stress of no exercise might be detrimental to your overall health.

There should really only be one "super high" intensity session a week even when you aren't concerned about immuno-suppression. Any more than that and the body won't recover properly anyway in time for the subsequent sessions. As ever recovery is just as important as the training. It does all depend on you as an individual but even the strongest body won't handle intense workouts for a sustained period of time without adequate recovery built into the schedule.

I'm doing the Trainerroad plans. The ones I'm doing all have a single VO2max workout per week, the others are typically threshold. There's also a day's recovery between each workout day.

Eat well, sleep well and don't panic!

Surprised this thread has got under the radar of the “there should be a lockdown” brigade”…

Nothing wrong with lockdown tbh,plenty of time to ride after we’ve burnt out the spread of it for a while.

A trainer based workout is hardly a walk in the park.

I did a fast road ride a few days ago. Only short and thought I wasn’t taking the piss. Anyway, woke up with a sore throat the next day and now bricking it a bit. Fingers crossed it’s nothing

I think it’s because it’s still a bit cold outside and if your not breathing thru a buff your ramming cold air into you lungs and I’m not sure they like it 🙂

I ripped home last week and bingo had the sore throat the next day.

I think it’s a riding thing like the nearly falling over because you get up too fast.

Strangely I’ve just been out walking the dog with the wife after a pleasant easy 50 mile road ride through the countryside talking about this. While I’m not overly worried about my training impacting my health, with the racing season just about to be canned, I’ve decided to not worry about racing fitness and enjoy my riding without being as obsessive about my weight and my FTP/watts per kg.
I said to the missus, that I just need to find a way of maintaining current weight and fitness, but by enjoying it.
I did 35 miles on Friday, with a specific total number of watts for the duration, I hardly noticed the fact that I was in amazing countryside with great views of an incoming storm in the distance, I couldn’t stop and enjoy it as I had my watts to maintain! Today doing a steady ride was really enjoyable, still burned 1800 calories but it was nice and easy.

Dukeofdoom, what’s the link to nearly falling over when getting up to fast and riding?
Happens to me sooooo often and hasn’t linked it to cycling.

To the OP. Why are you employing a coach to train for cycle touring and bike packing? Bit overkill isn't it? If you are training for other events I'd suggest they are probably not going to happen this year so I'd save my money and energy and throttle back on the training.

This time of the season I’m normally beginning to ramp up the intensity on my workouts but because of the TT’s being cancelled for the foreseeable future there’s no point. I’ll still train, but just keep doing the sessions I’m doing now. Namely tempo and sweetspot efforts on the turbo 2-3times a week and maybe a team time trial on Zwift. I normally do a long Z2 ride outside on a Sunday but the way Boris was talking earlier I think I did my last one today for a while.

Dukeofdoom, what’s the link to nearly falling over when getting up to fast and riding?
Happens to me sooooo often and hasn’t linked it to cycling.

Fally over

It’s cos your too fit 🙂

When folk are taking about high intensity, how high are you taking about?

I'm talking about sessions with sustained and repeated efforts above threshold with limited recovery. Sweet spot-type sessions are a good call as they give you almost as much benefit as a threshold interval work-out, but with reduced stress.

Mostly at the moment I seem to be just riding my bike, dodging lemmings and enjoying the scenery.

I've kerbed my outdoor riding, but shall continue with indoor riding but will most likely do more shorted rides rather than longer ones as I have more time as less commuting, will also walk if and when I can and run too. Thinking keeping fit during this is important but not to the point of exhaustion.

To the OP. Why are you employing a coach to train for cycle touring and bike packing? Bit overkill isn’t it? If you are training for other events I’d suggest they are probably not going to happen this year so I’d save my money and energy and throttle back on the training.

Good question. Employed said coach so that I could work on increasing my FTP as I was riding like a snail compared to 4 years ago. It is working, but now that I have pretty much ruled out summer cycle touring through France and Italy, I am most likely going to pull the plug.

Speaking to a few docs they have ALL said reduce high intensity training, your body will need all its reserves to fight this bug.

My neighbour was going out for runs (on her own), whilst self isolating with CV-19. Apparently she just felt mildly unwell and didn't stop her doing anything. She's back working on the CV-19 ward tomorrow at the local Hospital. Apparently most people will barely notice they have the virus eg her partner has shown zero symptoms so is either asymptomatic or immune, which they think about 20% are.

Re the head rush when standing up:

I have had some success with iron supplements helping to reduce this. Recommended by another rider, could tell u why it works though.

Only happens when I’m at my fittest

Are any of you adopting a different approach to their training / riding during this rotten time?

I've canned all out of home activities tbh, I managed to run a mile in my garden yesterday, gave the neighbours a laugh!. I was out for a run on saturday lunchtime, round my usual quet loop, and it was pretty busy, just don't feel right doing it.

I could justify cycling to work, going for a run early morning, but in the bigger picture, I prefer to pretty much observe my own lockdown.

Treadmill and turbo ordered, and there's oodles of home HIIT workouts online to get through.

I’ve kerbed my outdoor riding

I kerbed my expensive alloy wheel the other day. Now staying in to minimise further damage 😉

When folk are taking about high intensity, how high are you taking about?

If you have a power meter, I'd be avoiding sustained z4 and especially z5+ as much as possible. For example, the last Zwift "TT Tune-Up" workout I did on 25th Feb would not be a good idea IMO. At the time, I had recently done 309W for 20mins https://www.strava.com/activities/3131619705/analysis

If you just have access to heart rate data, which can be influenced by all sorts outside your fitness, hopefully you have an idea of your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate, which can very roughly be gauged from the highest average heart rate you can sustain for 20mins. https://cricklesorg.wordpress.com/ is free and with permission to link to your Strava data including heart rate, will give you an estimate. I wouldn't be riding close to LTHR for much more than a minute or two at most.
Because I've eased off training since my "manflu19" symptoms on 27th Feb, my LTHR has dropped from ~175bpm to ~162bpm.

By way of comparison to "TT Tune-Up" workout from last month, https://www.strava.com/activities/3208307182/analysis was really a gentle pootle yesterday afternoon. While I felt absolutely fine during the ride and only ended because it was sunset, the one thing that jumped out from the data considering I was using 34/32 gear on practically all of those little inclines, was that my heart rate for the effort was ridiculously high...

But then I definitely have something new since last Weds, with a dull tight ache around the top of my lungs above my sternum, while my better half has just had to ring NHS111 because she says a fever began last Monday (coughing on Tues, breathlessness Weds). I'll be amazed if she is cleared to return to NHS for her Weds shift.

I'm in confinement in France.. so the swimming and running has dropped right off, but I'm back on Zwift.

I'm doing the 4wk FP booster, but cautiously. Most workouts seem to be under an hour, which I guess is how they can be planned each day. I'll add in extra rest days if I start to feel trashed, exactly to prevent being weakened. I'll happily accept less or zero fitness gains from doing this; the main benefit isn't getting fitter, it's just keeping me sane!

BTW - if anyone is thinking of getting a trainer - Buy one now! All French/Spanish webshops are out of stock, and if the UK goes into lockdown, they'll all sell out fast.

Just as an aside, I've always found recovery weeks horrid. I feel worse than when I'm actually training, really awful and sluggush and a bit ill even, and seem far more likely to pick up some sort of minor bug / sniffle. It doesn't seem uncommon and one explanation is that training reasonably hard actually pumps out hormonal stuff that helps with overall well-being.

I think it's wise to be cautious, but don't be paranoid and keep doing stuff. I go a bit nuts if I don't ride or run anyway.

Intensity and duration have dropped off (running) as all events are cancelled until the Autumn at the earliest. I'm still getting out for solo runs and keeping my streak going (25th May 2019 --->) but no club runs or club sessions. The way I see it is that theres no point in flogging myself with no targets on the horizon. I've just been through about 12 weeks of marathon training so I'm pretty sharp at the moment but I'll not try and maintain that, but will start picking things up again possibly in August depending on how things pan out. It could be earlier or later.
At the moment I can get out off road from about 200m from my door so not really seeing many people so keeping within self isolation rules and just enjoying being out in the fresh air with the sun out and the trails drying... I'm enjoying just running without having any goals or targets to push/aim for.

The high end fitness zones, i.e. sprint, anaerobic & VO2max drop off fairly quickly but if you've built a decent base then that's going to last a good amount of time and it only needs a couple of rides a week to keep "topped up".

When I was fell running I had a local loop that included the course of the local race (actually one of the oldest fell races going, dates from the mid 1800s) and I'd let myself go. One race I came next to last - the shame! So I started doing hill reps once a week, the efforts weren't at the ready to puke stage but not far off. I'm helped in that there's a 20% track next to the house. My base time for my training run was 64mins, I'd do it a couple of times a week. Over the next month or so my time dropped steadily until it was just over the hour. A week or two later and I'd got to 59mins. Then all of a sudden my time dropped to 51mins in one go. I eventually got my PB to 49mins and most of my times were in the 50-51min range. If I stopped the hill reps my times soon crept back up towards the hour, restart and they'd come down again. During this time my long runs hardly changed in the time they took. Two separate systems going on.

So I think that some harder sessions are in order if you have somewhere safe/socially acceptable to do them. You don't have to go crazy, maybe do a fartlek style run throwing in the odd tempo or sprint, it will just keep that top end ticking along.

Recovery weeks always seem to be harder than they should be but it has to be psychological rather than physiological, probably along the lines of "I want to be training not doing this boring stuff" even though we know that we need the easing up in intensity to give our bodies time to catch up in its adaptations.

@ titusrider

Re the head rush when standing up:

I have had some success with iron supplements helping to reduce this. Recommended by another rider, could tell u why it works though.

Only happens when I’m at my fittest

Do you mean when you stand up you get a bit light headed for a few secs? I started getting this earlier in the year, coincidently just as I became as fit as I'd ever been. Went to see cardiologist and he scanned my heart and all was good.

Still get it a few times a day, it's not bad but it's a bit noticeable. How often does it happen with you?

Yup, that’s the feeling. I was getting it a couple of times a day too at my fittest.

Multivitamin with iron taken with Orange juice (helps the iron not mess up your tummy) made a difference for me

The light headed thing for me is a sign of dehydration. Made worse by drinking red wine instead of properly re-hydrating.

As for original question;

Absolutely not, especially whilst we're still allowed to train outside and have the luxury of WFH!

Given racing is on hold I'm sticking with my normal build plan for race season but supplementing it with as much Z2 as I can handle. I pay for a coach so this may change but current thinking is to be race ready as soon as racing is on the cards.

The Risk of crashing and putting a strain on the syetem has made me think twice, went out saturday morning but gave my usual blast down my local Downhill track a wide berth.

Video: British Doctor Urges Mountain Bikers to "Make Good Decisions"

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/video-british-doctor-urges-mountain-bikers-to-make-good-decisions.html

A bit of frustration got the better of me at the silly time of ~1815 yesterday, my tight chest feeling had subsided since Monday but I was so wiped all Tuesday, so I went for a last-dash pre-sunset circuit on a segment course I'd only done twice before and they were on the fatbike with 29er wheels fitted. Lezyne GPS was on stem, but I wasn't fixating on the live data at all, just went with feel and not pushing to absolute limits.

https://www.strava.com/activities/3214109009/analysis

Considering I've done so little z3+ since late Feb, it felt pretty good. I went to sleep stupidly late for me last night approaching midnight, so I felt like death warmed up when I popped to the loo at ~0700, but thankfully I got back to sleep until a crazy late ~1015* and I'm now only part way through breakfast... But no obvious physical moans from pushing the boat out and actually really tempted to head out to the Warnford area hills for a ~30-mile loop.

* Missing my booked spot on the stage 5 TOW race stage, but there's plenty more over next few days!

This really wasn't the most sensible ride, I was guilty of this type of stupid z4+ ride far too often this time last year when I caught a respiratory bug and it probably contributed to having to stop all z3+ for ~9 weeks.