Help! I feel like crap.

afrost

 Hi all,

Looking for some advice here.  I am getting ready for IMC at the end of August.  I know that this is the heavy workload time in the schedule.  I have done this before - this will be IM #6.  But I really feel terrible these days.  I actually feel ill in the mornings when I wake up.  I feel like I am hung over - and I am not drinking these days!  The day progresses and I have no desire to do any workout and generally just want to go back to bed.  In fact, I'll come home from work and do just that!  Maybe nap for 20 or 30 minutes. 

Due to low ferritin levels I am back on ferrous gluconate.  I have always tolerated this well in the past, but maybe this is making me feel bad?  I am sleeping poorly - generally wake up after about 5 hours of sleep and toss and turn until the alarm goes off.  I am woken up by terrible and disturbing dreams too.  I think the sleep disturbance is due to the low ferritin, but maybe something else?

So what to do?  Suck it up princess and carry on?  Take a few days off and see what happens?  I am tempted to do the former and just see if I can get over this.  Even though I don't feel like it, I have been doing the workouts and they have gone OK.  Nothing terrible and I am able to get them done.  The stinking hot and humid weather has not helped either.

Thanks for any insight, help, or encouragement!

---Ann.

 

gamb

I've felt pretty similar for coming up on a month now. started getting weak, kept going, didn't back off and all of a sudden my easy efforts were producing z4+ heart rates and I had nothing in the tank and wasn't sleeping for more than an hour or two at a time. Started using caffeine and sugar to keep going and finally it spiraled into pretty much crashing at two races back to back weekends. Needless to say, I'm on day 5 of my 10 day break and it's the hardest thing I've done but I'm sleeping better and I think I'm starting to feel better. I've slept all night and napping when I feel like napping after work. Everyone is different and I'm sure the coaches or people with more experience than me will chime in but don't train yourself into the ground. It hurts physically and mentally.

Edit:  This is wall pre-EN, I just joined late last week so it was all my own doing.  Just wanted to make that clear

Nate Parady

Ann, The easy answer is that you need to stand down until you can at least get a few good nights sleep under your belt. The challenge with tough minded folks is that we can suck it up into a brick wall. So I wouldn't suck it up princess

I know for me, If I'm not sleeping well, I'm probably not training very well either. Oh, you can get away with it for a while but it will all eventually catch up with you...your body will throw you a cold, or a new sore spot...If it was me, I would rather stand down now for a few days versus being sick or not 100% healthy later in August, closer to your race.

I'm sure you know all of this with all the experience that you have...

I would take a few days off and do some solid eating, do everything you can to get some good nights sleep and then ease back into it. If your still not feeling good, I would head off to the doctors to get checked out...Not sure about the Ferritin levels but maybe something else is at play here.

Agree that the weather sucks right now. The high heat makes it almost as bad as Snow.

good luck.

new2703

I'm no doctor and I don't play one on TV. I would go see your GP and get checked out. Blood test etc.. Need to figure out what is making you ill/ tired. Once you have test results then you can figure out course of action. In the mean time sounds like you are in some serious need of rest.

new2703

Our bodies usually tell us what to do we just need to listen

Carrie Chavez

I could have written your post myself. Ha! I am training for IM Mont Tremblant, the race is one week before yours. I hit the very fatigued place starting end of May and all of June. I fell twice on runs- tripping due to fatigue and heavy tired legs. After first fall I got more rest and felt better but still pushed through fatigue on the day of a second fall. Got stitches after that fall. My point in telling you is I was stupid and should have been more careful. The risk of "pushing through" is not worth it. It will not help you. Take extra rest days. Skip workouts all together. Decide which workouts are more important: likely long steady ride, long run and long swim. The rest can be easy workouts- like SUPER easy. I realize this is counter intuitive to the "CRUSH IT" EN mentality but who cares. I for one do not agree with the crush it mantra. It is silly and not going to get you the results you want. Rest and sleep are key. Recover now. Then get back to it in a modified way until you can sleep more normally and begin to feel better.

Good luck.

Brenda Ross

Have you gotten your Vitamin D checked. I had iron issues and although they got better I still had the fatigue. Once I got diagnosed as vitamin D defficient, and stated taking it, I was feeling very energized within days, yes days.

afrost

Thanks everybody for your words of wisdom. I am going to take a few days off. Focus is on just getting my sleep back in order and I think this will help tremendously. Hopefully will come back and be able to get at least the long stuff done by early next week. I am going to give up the intensity for a week or so after that and see if that makes a difference. I appreciate all your replies!

---Ann.

Paul Hough

A bowl of ice cream plus some dark chocolate might do wonders!

penlynwilson

Posted By Paul Hough on 19 Jul 2012 02:48 PM

A bowl of ice cream plus some dark chocolate might do wonders!

Paul: is ice cream your fix it for everything? :-)

Paul Hough

Ice cream (and push-ups) cure everything! I had plenty in the 4 off days I took after Muncie. Now, as I look down the road, all I see is an ice cream vacuum that won't get filled until after I complete IMCOZ. Oh, the sacrifices we make for this sport.

afrost

Good idea, Paul. I do like a little DQ now and then. :-)

---Ann.

ccotstanza12

Great timing for this post. I have been having similar problems in the past week and a half or so. I've hit all my workouts except for the full RR on Saturday. I scratched the run at 30 min because I just felt awful. I thought it had to do with the heat. However, I haven't really felt great this whole week...not sleeping well, feeling run down all the time, no motivation to get my workouts in, then finally getting them in and hitting pretty close to my goals...until today. I set out for a two hour run, only motivated by the fact that it was beautiful out and I got through and hour and my legs felt like I had already run a marathon on them. I completely forgot the intervals and still was hurting, so I called it at an hour. Ann and Carrie's thoughts were echoing through my head.

I've read the fatigue wiki post and some other threads on loss of motivation, and I'm still not sure where I stand. I feel like up until today I could still push it. Today is a different story though. I'm headed to Placid this weekend to spectate and will probably get a ride and a swim in at least. This is my second time through the intermediate HIM plan, so I have the base training for sure, just not sure what is reasonable to take for a rest. I definitely get antsy once my body is ready to get training again, but I'm concerned that 6 weeks out from another A race I could be wasting all of the work I've put in thus far. I am, however, always game for some PB ice cream...couldn't hurt, right?

Peter Greagg

Just my $0.02 worth, but it is so easy for us to get caught up in the "CRUSH IT" EN mentality that Carrie mentions.
We need to keep in mind that the work we do in all our sessions is only part of the process of getting faster.
It's do the work, then rest, and after the rest, you get faster. If you ignore the signs that you just aren't absorbing the work (ie the symptoms that Ann describes) you are wasting some of the work you are doing, and running the very real risk you will dig yourself into a huge hole that could take months to recover from.
For me, when I can't sleep very long at night (it's often sleep only for a couple of hours at a time), and often with weird, vivid dreams, and don't have any training mojo, that's when I must stand down and recover..
The lack of training mojo and greatly disturbed sleep as so foreign to my "normal existance" (well, perhaps not normal as my wife would say but you know what I mean).