[brianlcox]

Sorry to hear of your health troubles Risto!

I am also recovering from a covid case that turned into pneumonia. I’ve been off training for two weeks, and before that I spent 3 weeks at around 50% volume to deal with a case of achilles tendonitis. I’m still off work for another week, so I’m pretty early in the recovery process.

Starting yesterday my doctor has allowed me to walk, but nothing too strenuous. I’m planning on walking about an hour a day, trying to keep the average heart rate under 110bpm, with no spikes above 130 bpm on hills. My AeT is 160, so this is theoretically very easy for me, but at 130 bpm I feel like I am working too hard and start coughing, so I try to avoid that. I plan to keep at this intensity for a week or two before increasing the heart rate cap to around 140 bpm, while trying to keep the average around 125. This will allow me to run the flats and downhills, but probably walk on the steeper uphills. I will probably increase my weekly volume up to around 8-9 hours during these weeks. After these two weeks I will increase the heart rate cap by another 10 beats a minute (which is pretty much my normal easy running intensity) and increase the volume back to my “normal” healthy volume which is around 10 hours. After two weeks like this I will start to add some strides and short speed work, depending how I’m feeling.

 

Best, Brian