Rupp went to the same doctor that I go to for my thyroid problem. He's in good hands and should be feeling better soon.
The thyroid pills kick in pretty quickly, but the problem is that it is tough finding the right dosage. It's really just a guessing game of trial and error for a while. You try taking one pill for a while, then take blood tests and see if that was too much or too little. There is a lot of fine-tuning and tweaking involved. For instance 5 days a week I take one dosage, and then two days a week I take a higher dosage. That's the combo that has worked best for me for now.
My opinion on some of the questions brought up by the above posters:
-I don't think overtraining has anything to do with it. In actuality, the thyroid problem is probably the reason that Rupp may have showed some signs or symptoms of overtraining. Hypothyroidism really really affects your ability to recover.
I know if I'm off by a bit in my dosage, I'll feel like crap for a while. The legs feel sluggish all of the time, no zip out of the legs, tired all of the time, etc. Plus my sleep cycle can go crazy and I'll start having trouble going to sleep no matter how exhausted I am.
-There's a good reason that this didn't surface until now. I didn't find out I had it until a coach suggested I go get some blood work done. A lot of the symptoms are the same as normal wear and tear of training hard as a distance runner. It's hard to seperate the sluggishness and tiredness b/c you are training hard and that caused by the thyroid thing. Plus, if you have no idea you have that problem, you really don't know how your supposed to recover to normal training anyways. Once I got the problem sorted out, I was amazed out the difference in recovery after workouts. For the longest time I thought I was supposed to feel like crap for a long time after hard workouts.
Anyways, it doesn't surprise me to see some of the results that Rupp has had after hearing he is hypothyroid. It's hard for most people to understand, but it really can affect your training and racing. Whenever I'm racing bad, that's the first thing I always have to check. It's a pain because you really don't know if it's just that the thyroid is off, or if you really are on the brink of overtraining.