The rain started on Culver Road about five miles into the ride. I don’t like riding in the rain – I don’t like getting wet, and the lack of visibility and the slick pavement makes me a little twitchy every time a car hisses by. It started with big drops, spaced at bout two second intervals; I counted them off until they came too quickly, and felt the water pooling in my shoes. I was in heaven.
Even though I hate riding in the rain there was something truly glorious in that moment. The asphalt on that stretch of Culver is smooth, even, recently-paved blacktop, unlike the rough, ragged chipseal so common on central New Jersey roads, and the traffic was light. It is a country road that wends for two miles through Middlesex County from Monmouth Junction to Drayton, from Friendship to Georges, and on this day, it was perfect.
Even in the driving rain, it was a beautiful two miles. I was on my first ride since coming down with COVID in the first week of July and it was so good to be back.
I have been sick. I started to feel pretty rough on the night of 7 July, after having done a solid, if slow, 43-mile ride that morning. My throat was scratchy and sore, and the lymph nodes in my neck felt swollen. With all the heat, pollen, and wildfire smoke that we have been having this summer, I concluded that my ailment was environmental rather than viral. You see, I am double-boosted, and I have been obsessive about masking- up in public spaces since the winter of 2020.
I awoke the next morning coughing and feeling like someone had used my lungs as a concrete mold. I took a test and got the double-lines. I had COVID.
My symptoms were actually fairly mild. I had a few days of coughing and low fevers (never more than 100° F), really the very definition of the “bad cold or flu” standard that we use to gauge the severity of COVID but, from the evening on the third day on, I was knocked down with intense fatigue and a heavy chest. Having read enough about the coronavirus on the Internet – as you do when you’re sick at home – I began to worry that I had succumbed to “long COVID.”
Okay, that’s just me being a hypochondriac after reading too much Internet garbage. Ignore it.
I was eager to get back to cycling, of course, even if I didn’t have the energy to get on the road. I worried about what adverse effects the illness might have, both in the long and short terms, and when it was wise to start riding again. Friends who had been through this cautioned that, if I started back too early, I could do myself permanent damage; others warned of heart issues like elevated resting heartrates – not the kind of thing that cyclist on the wrong side of 50 wants to risk.
In the end, the advice that made the most sense to me came from my friend Brian, a Boston-based trail runner and ultramarathoner who has come back from COVID twice. “I approached COVID recovery like I do recovery after really long ultras,” he said. “I hold off on running because I want to and wait until I have to. I suspect cycling might be more forgiving, so you might be back in the saddle soon enough.”
That feeling of having to ride is something that I can understand and, even if it is the most subjective and unscientific of metrics, it does speak to the whole idea of listening to your body. So, I would hold off on my return to the road until, as generations of French cyclists have said, I felt les fourmis dans mes jambes (the ants in my legs).
That first ride that took me along Culver and other roads in Middlesex County – less than 16 miles at a pokey 14.5 mi/h – was proof of concept. I had taken about a week after my symptoms had disappeared to rest up. My resting heartrate was about 5 bpm higher than it had been before COVID, which was annoying but not overly alarming, and I finally decided to just see how it went. The ants were crawling all over my legs.
It went well, so I took a rest day and pushed on, riding what I started calling le Tour de COVID. My heart rate is normal and, although I had lost a little strength in my time-off, I took it easy, and gradually lengthened my rides. Still, I noticed an alarming drop in my lung capacity; on even short, easy rides, my chest would get tight, and I felt out of breath when I pushed the pace even a little and climbed even small hills. The trick that COVID does on your lungs is pretty dramatic.
I started to do breathing exercises using a breathing trainer. These are nifty little gadgets that allow you to set a certain amount resistance when you breathe in, with no resistance when you breathe out. The resistance is provided by a little ball, and I have come to think of these exercises as “sucking balls.” The theory is that the resistance will exercise the muscles around your lungs, make them stronger just like exercising any other muscle, and improve your lung capacity. Breathing trainers range in price from about $15 to $200; I went cheap.
The thing is, the exercises actually seem to work. My breathing does seem to be getting better, and I feel much less out-of-breath even after about a week of doing them. I doubt the breathing trainer will deliver the amazing results that some of the flashier and more expensive units promise but, at this point, any results are good results. As road cyclists who spend thousands of dollars to save a few watts and grams often say: “marginal gains.” I’ll take ‘em.
After a pretty successful solo ride in last Friday’s heat, I figured I was ready to see if I had really recovered from COVID. I carried a respectable 15.2 mi/h over a slightly hilly 30-mile course in central New Jersey (follow me on Strava if you want to check up on me) and, although my breathing felt better, I also felt that I had lost my high-end. No easy 16-17 mi/h solo rides for me for a while, it seems.
With all those ants, I had been itching to get back to group rides with the Princeton Free Wheelers and, when my friend Jim posted a Sunday ride in the club’s ride calendar for this weekend, I jumped at the chance to ride the final stage of le Tour de COVID. I like Jim’s rides. I can ride with the club’s B-level rides, and even hang-in with a B+ ride, but Jim’s C+ rides, which normally run about 40 miles at a comfortable and conversational 15-ish mi/h average speed are what I’m usually up for.
I had to ride about 11 miles, with 250 feet of elevation gain to get to the start point in Franklin Township, so Jim’s 40 mile loop, with 1,500 feet of climbing was going to be a challenge. It would be 62 miles (100km) for me, with 2,000 feet, and my longest post-COVID ride was 30 miles – I hadn’t ridden more than 50 miles since mid-June! I was worried that I had bitten off a little more than I could chew, but I comforted myself that the route was never more than 11 miles from my house, so I could bail out and limp home if I had to…
I surprised myself.
It wasn’t an easy ride, by any measure. I still don’t have my top-end and, even though I have always enjoyed attacking hills, I died on the climbs, making up time like a grand tour sprinter on a mountain stage in the descents. At the end of the ride, as we gathered around cars and post-ride commentary, Dave turned to me and gallantly said “you’re back!” He’s nice like that… But he’s wrong. I am not back. I rode home slowly, ending with a 14.7 mi/h average over the 62 miles, showered, got dressed, and spent the rest of the day staring into space and watching the Tour de France Femmes on television while drifting in-and-out of consciousness. I backed out of my tennis game with Molly. I was not just tired, but depleted in a way that I have not felt in a long time.
Yet, I did it. I can return to the club rides without embarrassing myself too much and, even though I am not fully “back,” whatever Dave says, at least I didn’t go out the back (except maybe on that sharp hill west of Princeton… that sucked). I can feel like I am a bike rider again.
I have a sense that I lost a few months in a couple of weeks, though. In a way, the middle of summer seems a lot like the start of the season. To quote John Lennon it “feels just like starting over.” I hate that song, but it has been playing in my head on a loop every time I have been on the bike, since my first day back and getting caught in the rain on Culver Road. And maybe I hate it a little less now because, you know, you have to start somewhere.