Running After COVID-19

In early January 2021, a year (give or take) into the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccination process is just beginning. I received my first dose of the Moderna vaccine two weeks ago (and other than a slightly elevated heart rate both at rest and during exercise for a few days, I haven’t noticed any side effects). The news on COVID-19 seems to change daily, and yet the constants remain: people are still getting infected, people are dying and many people who have survived continue to have symptoms. Very few ultrarunners would be expected to die from COVID-19, but long-term symptoms of the infection have surfaced as a particular concern among otherwise healthy athletes.

In the October 2020 issue of UltraRunning, I reported that a surprising and unsettling 52% of self-identified trail and ultrarunners were experiencing symptoms two months or longer after their initial diagnosis. More recently, data from the COVID Symptom Study (1) found that, of all participants in their app-based