Long Covid - Managing training intensity on a Fenix 6 Sapphire

You aren't going to like this answer but realize I am trying to help, not hurt you.

I've had long-covid since early 2020 and you know what I hope? I hope you don't really have long-covid but "simply" post-viral syndrome which still sucks but will be much shorter.

Put away the training plans. Put away the race plans.

Be happy you can still exercise, many cannot, many pro-athletes had to retired after covid and many others cannot exercise at all.

Exercise by time and throw away the effort plans.

Do NOT try to do speed work (high intensity) sessions, they are guaranteed setbacks.

Your blood vessels themselves are likely inflamed, it's not just a loss of fitness from downtime.

You CANNOT train yourself out of long-covid, I tried that for the first year.

If you push yourself, you will injure yourself, not just once but repeatedly over time, it will happen when you are least expecting it.

In many ways athletes with long-covid are very much like athletes who have overtraining-syndrome which you can google.

There are no cures. Just lots of lies and hope.

Now, all that said, the GOOD news is that SOME people DO recover. It just takes time.

And those people will credit the last technique they used for that recovery, if it was some kind of training or some kind of supplement.

But that doesn't mean it's going to work for you. For over three years I've tried.

Don't give up hope, but don't start making plans.

After a year I was able to exercise an hour a day but of course at a much reduced level than before covid.

Then the injuries started happening, despite the greatly reduced load.

So again, take that into account.

No watch, nothing Garmin makes is going to help you detect and manage long-covid.

I do recommend something like the HRM-PRO-Plus so you can download the heartrate from an activity and find missing heartbeats from the ANT+ broadcast which happens with every brand, not just Garmin.

I discovered that my max heartrate is not as collapsed as I thought it was, so that's good news.

Be sure to set your max heartrate manually and dial it way down from whatever it was before 10+ beats less.

Your resting heartrate will also go up, though mine went back pretty close to what it was before covid after a year.

Thanks for that rinserepeat. I’ve had long covid for 3.5 years and recognise most of what you say from my own painful experience. I’ve been medically diagnosed with long covid and had about 6 months support from the hospital, before they needed to move on to help others. 

I’d given up on running and recycled all my old kit. Then in October I had the worst bout of covid so far. Six weeks later, possibly coincidentally, the brain fog, depression and sick/fatigue feeling almost disappeared. I still have lung damage, and DEFINITELY don’t want to kick long covid off again, but I feel well enough to run again, just 1-3 slow miles at circa 14 minute mile pace, but that’s miraculous after the last 3 years. (I was a competitive hill racer before covid, plus I’m ex mountain rescue and an ex international at archery, so life changed dramatically after covid).

I can try manually reducing my max heart rate and see if that works. The British Heart Foundation calculates aerobic and anaerobic thresholds MASSIVELY differently to Garmin, so I may want to reset each zone manually, not just max HR, but not sure if that’s possible, but the BHF zones feel much more realistic in my position.

An interesting perspective is for the first year I was also 100% sure I had severe permanent lung damage.

Not only vo2max way way down and hard to breath and couldn't recover from even easy efforts the next day.

BUT somewhere within the 2nd year the lungs started to come back. 

Lung alveoli don't regenerate BUT if it's not alveoli  damage but rather a thick mucous within the alveoli, eventually that can drain but like my example, it took over a year.

It's the blood vessel inflammation that will really get you though, that takes as long to heal if not longer or forever basically.

After covid the  body seems to be negatively trained to react to oxidative stress as illness, even if it from exercise.

Basically all I can recommend is base base base building and more base. 

*** BTW I was thinking some more about your actual question, how to make the watch be useful and still monitor exercise loads and recovery.

So there is actually a way, now that I think about it.

What covid does is basically age a person. It's you, just radically aged.

ie. if you were 30 your body is so stressed and damaged now it is like you are 50+

So what you can do on the watch is basically lie to the Garmin FirstBeat metrics, at least until you see yourself exceed those parameters.

Set your age via birthday, ten years back. Maybe even 20 years. ie. if you are 30 the watch thinks you are 50 now

But most importantly is your lactate threshhold.

If you only cycle and you don't have a power meter you'll never know your true LT now.

But even you run, I strongly recommend AGAINST trying to find out, because you'll hurt yourself and get PEM for days if not weeks.

So whatever your max heart rate was before, set it down 10+ bpm.  200 becomes 190 or 180

Whatever your LTHR was before, ie. 170, set it down the same 10+ bpm or even 20

Then Garnin's Firstbeat will show you producing much much higher loads for the same effort as now wiith much longer recovery times.

Eventually I guess you could fiddle with the age and zones until the watch shows you recovery times that seem to match how you feel.

ps. here is a diagram of what I think happened to my lungs and why I thought it was permanent but instead took over a year to somewhat become more normal

https://i.imgur.com/doqpTjZ.png