!!!

 I guess I've been busy, too busy to realize or even entertain the possibility that I might have long COVID. 

To recap: I caught COVID in 2022 and my running/jogging pace dropped abruptly and stayed there.

I figured that I had gained some weight or something, and that if I just kept on jogging, it would sort itself out. 

Meanwhile my runs dwindled; 15 minute jogs were no longer recovery runs. It was somewhat miserable.

Fast forward two years or so. I'm discussing it with a colleague and we started joking that I have long COVID.

But shoot, maybe I do. I have felt pretty crappy for a while, but I attributed it to life and overtime and uh other illnesses including COVID again. But what if the virus had actually taken a crowbar to my cardiovascular system? How can I live with it? Or can I reverse it?

Fast forward a couple of months and a pop culture regurgitation of the Norwegian HUNT study (granted, I didn't pull up the complete article either): 4X 4 min intervals. I'm not sure if there's a more complete protocol, but whatever, I decided to do this twice a week for a few months. I'm not even sure what the rest period or the level of effort should be, but 4 minutes of tempo effort is not very daunting at least, so a good place to start.

This turned out to be the main key: "effort." Whether or not I have long COVID or increased corpulence or just some plain old deconditioning, pushing myself too much on longer runs isn't productive. Maybe that's why I keep getting sick. So I calculated my heart rate zones somewhat, yada yada...so now on my other runs, I'm jogging VERY slowly and taking walk breaks whenever my heart rate gets too high. 

To my surprise, after a few weeks of this, I jogged (with some walk breaks, mind you) for almost 90 minutes and felt surprisingly fine. When's the last time that happened?  I can't remember the last time I jogged for more than 45 minutes honestly. And it felt really chill.

Maybe this is actually working?