A triathlete who believes he contracted COVID-19 in early March warns others that a strenuous bike ride he went on after he started feeling better almost landed him in the hospital

• David Tucker, 58 years old, believes he contracted the coronavirus while traveling to a work conference in early March.
• He told Business Insider that he started experiencing symptoms as soon as he got home, including a dry cough, fever, and exhaustion. His doctor told him he wouldn't be able to get a test.
• Tucker said he went for his typical "strenuous" bike ride even though he wasn't feeling 100%, and by the end he wasn't breathing normally.
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David Tucker is a 58-year-old triathlete. He works in the marketing sector of the hospitality industry and teaches hotels, lodges, and brands how to create more revenue online.

He told Business Insider that he splits his time between Hawaii and Idaho, but has been staying in Idaho during the pandemic.

On March 2, he traveled to Denver for a work conference. It was during this trip that he believes he contracted the coronavirus. He returned home on March 5.

"As soon as I got home, I started to really have symptoms," he said. "It felt like my nervous system blew up. It happened so quickly, from having a dry cough for about 24 hours to just being completely zapped with a high temperature and exhaustion."

Tucker said he immediately suspected he had the coronavirus because he had the classic symptoms. He called his doctor, but was told that due to the limited number of tests they had available, unless it was crucial, he wouldn't be able to receive one.

But Tucker's suspicions grew stronger when he found out that two colleagues who he attended the conference with had tested positive. He told Business Insider that now he's 99% sure he had it.

Tucker explained that he was the sickest during the first three days. But over the course of the next five days, he started to feel better.

"I wasn't a hundred percent, but it was like having a cold," he explained. "If I get a cold, I'll go back out and I'll run, or I'll bike."

On Sunday March 15, the weather was nice so he decided to go for a bike ride on his local trail.

"I hit my normal ride," he explained. "And my normal ride is strenuous."

When he got back to his car, he told Business Insider that he was breathing abnormally.

"My first thought was that I've worked it out of my lungs," he said. "But really, every time I exhaled there was that feeling and that sound and just, you know, things were really tight," he explained. "It was almost like air was escaping into my chest cavity. And I've had that experience before, because I've had pneumonia once in my life."

His breathing got progressively worse.

"The next morning I woke up, and it was like, you know, if this gets any worse, I'm going to the hospital," he explained.

Fortunately, about three days after the bike ride, he said he started to feel better and his breathing was getting back to normal.

But a triathlete friend of his, who had tested positive for the virus, wasn't as lucky. According to Tucker, his friend went out for a bike ride and found himself in respiratory distress, and then later wound up in the emergency room on a ventilator. The friend was diagnosed with sepsis as well, Tucker added.

This friend was off a ventilator the last time Tucker spoke with him, he said.

Tucker believes his lungs weren't healthy enough to handle the bike ride he went on.

"I believe that whatever was in me hadn't settled, and I just really pulled it into my body," he explained."And my lungs were not healthy. They just weren't healthy, but I wasn't taxing them enough to really realize that."

Looking back on his experience, Tucker was eager to share his story with his friends and other athletes.

"If you feel like you've been sick, whether you've been tested or not, but you think you might have had it, definitely just take it easy for a week after you're starting to feel better," he said in a video he posted to LinkedIn. "You know, we'll all get back to work, we'll all get back to doing our thing, but in the meantime, don't put yourself at risk, because this thing has some legs to it, and it's a little bit different than anything I've ever had."

Tucker told Business Insider that if he could go back in time, he would have waited about 10 days before getting back on the bike.

"If I hadn't gone and worked out, I don't know what would have happened," he said in the video. "Would it have just cleared out? Did I end up just pulling it deeper into my lungs? You know, I don't know."

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