Covid vaccine and training

Actually that greater response to dose 2 is not all that unusual.

The first dose primed your immune system. You are probably in excellent health so you have a healthy immune system to begin with. In some way, the worse reaction is a good sign.

My reaction to the second Shingrix shot was far greater than the first shot. My reaction to the first Pfizer vaccine was not severe. I am expecting the second shot to cause a larger reaction.

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I had my first AstraZeneca jab almost 48 hours ago. Yesterday I was due a recovery ride in my plan however I felt too tired and generally washed out so gave it a miss. Feeling less tired today so pencilling in a resumption of training tomorrow. Fortunately I am in a recovery week this week. FF is a week on Saturday so there should be enough time for me to fully recover and adequately train by then :slight_smile:

My son in law is a physician and my wife works for a podiatrist, both of them told her to take 600 mg of ibuprofen 60 minutes after the shot. She had Pfizer. I’m getting my first shot tomorrow.

I had my first shot of AZ yesterday afternoon. I felt fine in the evening, but I slept badly and today I feel highly fatigued. Resting HR is up, muscles are aching and my head feels like it does with a bad hangover. I won’t be training today for sure and I can’t imagine I will be up for anything tomorrow unless there is a dramatic improvement. Luckily I timed this with a recovery week.

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I got my second Pfizer shot Sunday.
I did not plan any training for Monday because I expected a stronger reaction to the second shot, and sure enough I was very fatigued, and achy all Monday.

I did Recharger on Tuesday, and The Omnium on Wednesday so I assume all is OK.

In general, provided the reaction is not severe, a strong reaction is a sign that your immune system is doing its job.

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FWIW I had pretty similar experience with my 1st shot AZ March 13. For a couple of days I was really tired, and it took about a week to recover. I had a recovery week that week so hardly missed out on training. This week also fairly low-key because 4DP is tomorrow. will be interesting to see the result!

Do let us know how your FF goes after the jab. Hopefully won’t affect your performance.

I feel much better today, but still taking it easy. My HR is at least back to normal and my headache has gone. I’m going to attempt a bit of easy riding over the weekend and then hopefully get back on course.

OK so I did FF yesterday. Some good results, some not so good. Also I tried some different levels from my previous 2 FFs. The last time I did FF was last October and I’d forgotten just how tough it gets!

In FF, NM was good (went from 852w → 870w), MAP OK (almost identical to previous FF). However FTP was disappointing (from 257w → 244w). Probably it wasn’t due to any after-effects of the jab (although I wasn’t feeling fully up for it yesterday), rather it was probably due to the fact that a couple of days before FF I experimented using different levels.
I tried Open 15 as per the article here: -

In the 5 or 6 Open 15s i tried, I found a good level/gear combo for spinning in my target FTP range. Of course it’s not the same story doing FF as doing Open 15. So after having done the 5-minute MAP effort & NM sprints a few minutes before the FTP effort, I found myself missing the target FTP and changing gear too much, standing in places, losing smoothness etc. Maybe if I had stuck to the level settings/gearing from my previous FF it would be more conclusive. However I think the gearing was probably wrong yesterday rather than my fitness!

I’ve had 2 doses of Pfizer now.
Been fine after both. Mild arm ache, nothing more than that. I didn’t ride the day after the jab after hearing people feeling bad but I had nothing more than arm ache so jumped right back on!

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I haven’t seen anyone comment on the Janssen/Johnson&Johnson single-shot vaccine yet, so here goes. I got my shot Saturday afternoon, then did a workout after getting home since I felt fine. Around bedtime, my body realized it had something new in it and countered with fever, chills, headache, full-body ache, and some chest congestion.

Sunday was more headache and body ache (seriously, even my finger joints hurt), increased resting HR, decreased HRV, and no energy, so I definitely had to skip my workout.

Monday (today) HR and HRV looked very good, breathing back to normal - no tightness in the chest, but I don’t have the energy I would after a normal recovery day. I’m going to skip my evening group ride and do the hour-long workout I was supposed to do yesterday.

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So almost a week since my AZ shot and I’m still not firing on all cylinders. Resting HR is still fairly high. About the level I would normally see after a few really hard training sessions - even though I’ve taken it easy. I did attempt one fairly hard threshold ride on Sunday, but my HR went too high and I ended up a good 25W off my target power over an hour. But otherwise I felt okay. I’ve done a couple of recovery rides since and all seems fine. Just hoping my resting HR comes back down soon. It’s still about 5-7 bpm higher than normal.

I’m 68 and had my first Pfizer shot yesterday. Last night I felt fatigued and had mild headache. This morning I felt as if I had a virus: very tired, bad headache, and for some reason my tinnitus has turned to a roar. The shoulder where I had the shot feels hot to the touch.

It’s now just over 2 weeks since my first AZ jab. I only felt bad for one day (was wiped out on the couch), but my training form definitely suffered for well over a week and only now do I feel close to fully recovered. But if I wasn’t training and monitoring my HR I don’t think I would have noticed anything unusual after the second day following the jab.

I had my first Pfizer shot three days ago. I’ve been mainly in bed since with fever, chills, and aches from my hair to my toenails. It hit me surprisingly hard. This was to be a second building week in my training plan. That is obviously not happening! I do feel better today, so I’ll try a short ride and try to forget that Violator is on the calendar.

I’m a little worried about what’s in store after the second shot. At least it’s the week after my mid-plan HM.

I should add that I’ve had COVID-19 twice, so my body seems well primed to react to the vaccine.

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I had my second Pfizer shot today and to take it easy I did the full frontal when I got home from the hospital. All numbers are up between 5 and 10% and I feel dizzy and can barely breathe. On the plus side, all my workouts just got ramped up a notch, yay. (Attacker)

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Well, these vaccines do affect us all differently …

I had my first Pfizer shot last Wednesday night.
Felt knackered Day 1 and postponed HM, OK Day 2 and did HM (all numbers up), great Day 3 and did Endurance + (felt really good), back to ordinary Day 4 and Cadence builds/ holds/ single leg drills exhausted me, awoke with small mouth ulcer Day 5, felt fairly ordinary but did strength and yoga session feeling worse as day progressed. Slept hot and cold through the night waking on the hour (of course may just have been the thought of Omnium with new numbers the following day …) and on officially awaking I omitted Omnium and slept for another hour. Muscles pre-aching/ lack of energy/ feeling sorry for myself right now so will take tomorrow off completely and hopefully back training Thursday.
Nothing compared to what many of you have gone/ are going through but still enough to have to curtail things. Hang in there All and we’ll soon all be back to SUFfering with a vengeance.

@Craig.Quarmby Most of my friends have found value in a Z1/Z2 workout in the days after the shot. Even taking a walk has been helpful to them. I just received the 1st Pfizer dose yesterday and that is my plan and I finished Earth Cycle #5 yesterday. I feel fine but I am thinking that I will save workouts like The Omnium - which is a tough workout when I am feeling great - for another week and let my body adapt.

Now 10 days post Moderna #2, which totally wiped me out!

I had arm pain (significant) and on again/off again blahs after Moderna #1. Before Shot #2, I did long rides on Tues, Wed, Thurs planning to then rest going into the shot on Saturday. That was a good strategy, as I was fine until about 4 am on Sunday, when I woke up with body aches and felt too tired to move but too miserable to sleep. I even went for a walk on Sunday afternoon and had to stop and rest before coming back home!! Monday was a bit better, but I had no energy at all.

My rides since then have been struggles for anything over Zone 2, but I will give it another go today as I have a Gran Fondo this weekend and want to see how I feel. In hindsight, I think the better plan would have been to just ride Zone 1/2 for a week after the shot. “Feeling good” turned out to be quite brittle, as any hard effort left me shattered again.

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Yes, “feeling good” can be illusory!

I went back to normal training a week after my first shot and three days after the symptoms subsided. I caught a cold a few days later, but kept training; I had long rides on the calendar and couldn’t bear to lose another week of those. And it was just a cold! But on the third day I got feverish and too exhausted to get out of bed. After 24 hours of sleep, I feel I can get up now. And it was just a cold!

All this tells me we need to guard our immunity jealously in these days. It’s hard for me to shift my training goals back into “wellness” mode. But I have shot #2 coming up next week and I know it’s going to throw me. This is not how I imagined my GG200 plan going. It feels bitter to rework my weekly goals with my sights lowered.

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I feel so lucky. Had my second Pfizer shot on Saturday and had absolutely zero side effects. I took a 2 hour hike Sunday morning and expected it to hit me via the normal 24 hour delay, but it never did. I took a long outdoor ride yesterday. So it seems really random whether you will get side effects or not.

Norm

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