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That's a positive.

The scratchy throat started on Tuesday. I tried to ignore it, hoping it would resolve itself quickly and that it wasn't what I suspected it was. Wrong on both counts. I'd skipped riding on Monday morning after the trip to Orlando, but did venture out for the Tuesday morning levee ride, during which I felt fine. Wednesday morning was yet another trip to the Vet on the northshore to follow up on the new dog's skin, so I didn't get to ride. By noon on Wednesday, though, the sore throat seemed to be getting worse rather than better, and an hour later I pulled the plug and went home to take one of the at-home SARS CoV-2 antigen tests. Somewhat surprisingly, that turned up negative. I wanted to believe that it wasn't COVID, but deep-down I knew better, and if I needed any more confirmation, that came Wednesday night as the throat got significantly worse and was accompanied by a headache and head cold symptoms. I barely got through the night with help from Sudafed and Advil. On Friday morning I did another Antigen test. That one was clearly positive, not that I really needed the additional confirmation by then. For all practical purposes, things remained the same for the next three days and nights. Although I usually felt a lot better during the day when I was moving around, it was pretty cold outside in the mornings and so riding was completely off the table. Better to live to fight another day, as they say.

Saturday morning Robert came by to pick up race supplies for Sunday's Virlillia Road Race in Mississippi, the second race I'd planned to do, but couldn't, this year. It looked like it would have been a great early season race to do, so I was sorry to be missing it. I guess I should be happy that I am definitely not planning on doing Rouge Roubaix, to which they have added additional gravel miles. It's not that the temptation isn't there, but for sure I know better than to subject myself to that kind of thing.

It wasn't until Saturday that I started to get the upper hand on the virus, and I finally got some normal sleep by Sunday night. This morning, Monday, the sore throat was almost gone, and the dog was tugging at my arm by 5:30, so I decided it was time to reboot the system with an easy ride on the levee (rather than the sometimes-mellow Mellow Monday group ride). The temperature was in the low 40s, so I dressed for the upper 30, knowing I would be taking it easy and not generating much heat. After missing nine of February's 14 days so far, there was not much to be gained by trying to do a hard ride quite yet. 

Meanwhile the new dog has been rampaging through the house destroying whatever he can get hold of - shoes, my arm, plastic bags, papers, etc. The other day we came home to discover that he had found one of those big metal cans of popcorn that people get around the holidays. We'd forgotten we even had it, but he managed to knock it over and eat whatever was in there. This morning we caught him holding a wine glass in his paws and licking the remnants from the inside. So now, all the shoes are in closets and anything remotely edible has to be kept out of reach, which means about ten inches from the edge of any table or countertop. Next week he starts his heartworm treatments so we will be really challenged to keep his activity level down. He'll probably need to stay in his kennel most of the time.

 Next up for me will be Auburn on the 26th. I don't know if I'll still be feeling the effects of COVID and the resulting break in training by then, but there's only one way to find out.