Most of us take recovery for granted.

If you're healthy, you trust that if you get a cold or the flu, you'll get better.

But sometimes that doesn't happen.

It's difficult to imagine what it would be like if that level of illness just persisted

and lasted for weeks and then months and then years.

You've probably heard of long COVID, according to a recent government survey about one in

five adults who've had COVID-19 in the U.S. have experienced lingering symptoms from

the illness.

Now, long COVID is new, an outcome of the recent pandemic.

But the experience of symptoms lasting after an illness isn't new to some people, like

Winston.

A number of people would tell me that I was the most athletic person they'd ever met.

My regular day-to-day life was pretty rigorous at the time.

Years ago, Winston was an ambitious 20-something living in San Francisco.

He went camping on the weekends, snowboarding in the winter, and cycled year-round.

He even spent 24 days biking across Europe during the summer of 2015.

It was actually a race called the Transcontinental.

It started in Brussels and ended in Istanbul.

You just have to go as far as you can every day, unsupported.

The Transcontinental is one of the toughest, ultra-indurance bike races in the world.

Now, obviously, Winston wasn't participating in a 2700-mile bike race every day, but by

any measure, he was athletic.

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