Claire Duncan is a long-course triathlete known for her swim prowess. She was the top swimmer overall at Ironman Santa Rosa in 2018. The former digital editor of Triathlon Magazine Canada, Claire runs Nom de Guerre Studio, an integrated marketing, business development, PR and creative studio working with companies across the film, entertainment, tech and sports industries. She is also an account manager at Larvol, a communications and marketing firm in the pharmaceutical industry.  In March, Claire was diagnosed with Covid-19. I had the chance to ask her about the experience.

Suzanne Zelazo: When did you first think you might have Covid-19?

 

SZ: How were you diagnosed?

 

CD: I was in the US at the time when I was diagnosed and a friend who’s a doctor was able to order me a test. My partner had tested positive, and so we decided I should get tested too.

 

SZ: You are healthy, young, and super fit. How did the virus affect you?

 

CD: I didn’t have a cough, sore throat, or loss of taste/smell. But I had extreme fatigue and a low-grade fever for a couple days. I assumed that I had picked up any ordinary virus, so I kept up my usual activities. But even a short 6K jog completely wiped me out and gave me full body fatigue. That was unusual.

 

SZ: How long did the symptoms last?

 

CD: My symptoms lasted about 10 days. Over the course of time I did develop a little cough and sore throat and some pounding headaches.

 

SZ: What kind of treatment did you receive?

 

CD: I took the malaria medicine that was proven to help symptoms. I also isolated in a separate room of our house and just slept for most of the day.

 

SZ: What was the recovery like?

 

CD: Slow. Normally with a virus or cold, I’ve bounced back after a couple days. it took me almost a full two weeks to recover.

 

SZ: What surprised you the most?

 

CD: I had envisioned COVID-19 to feel like a head cold. The full body aches really surprised me.

 

SZ: Have you resumed some training? What is that like?

 

CD: I have resumed training, but even over a month later I am still not back to normal! I’ve cut my training down by more than 50 percent and only this week have I been able to ramp up again.

 

SZ: Are there measures you wish you took that you might encourage other triathletes to follow in protecting themselves?

 

CD: I wish I hadn’t tried to push through what I was feeling when I first got sick. I was trying to maintain my normal training load, and it totally backfired and ended up making me feel way worse and probably slowed my recovery (as well as put others in jeopardy before I realized I had the virus).

 

SZ: How are you getting through the lockdown post-Covid?

 

CD: I am very fortunate to be self-employed and working from home, so my routine there hasn’t changed too much from pre-lockdown days! I’m spending lots more time on the trainer, though, especially enjoying Zwift which I wasn’t using before. I’m also just taking things day by day and trying to not put too much pressure to keep my same level of fitness up. It’s a nice little period of downtime, and I am certainly looking forward to races when they do happen but not looking to rush my return to race-readiness!

 

SZ: Any further thoughts?

 

CD: Things are way better everywhere in terms of testing and safety precautions than they were in early March when I was sick. I do wish our government had acted earlier, though, because there are so many people like me who didn’t realize we were carriers before more info became available to the public.