Fatigued and slow - help?

I had the same problem in college. But I never figured out what it was, and it still plagues me. I don't really run anymore, so it hasn't been much of a concern.

But hopefully you get some responses and get some ideas or get this resolved.

Sounds to me like you don't have a lot of glycogen reserves in the muscles.

Do your base runs slower or shorter.

Slower if until you use 50% fats or something or shorter that you burn less of the glycogen stores.

Take multivitamine pills but if you can drink milk use my recipe for sportsman. You just blend a liter of milk with 4 bananas and drink it. This is a great filler for the muscle.

Only if you can deal with milk.

Also make sure you get your 8 hours of sleep a night, absolute athlete minimum is seven, you can get by with less with kids a job and stuff but it keeps you from performing well. When i train well i need 8 - 9 hours every night to feel fresh and responsive.

Other symptoms to your problem (say a form of overtraining):

poor class performance?

Bad memory or especially concentration?

Those are quite linked actually with if it is light over training.

Just for these reasons i tell my athletes to wear a monitor. Just as i do myself. Yes i run hard during the day but not very much and not to to hard but i also run slow so that my slow twitchers take most of the hard work a la slow twitch.

Also don't sleep to much i've known people that feel lazy and tired because they sleep nights of over 10 hours. Better is to do a night of 8 - 9 and do 30 minutes of flat rest after a run and shower after that.

Would you mind posting a week of your training and the pace of it and your intervals i am sure that will shine light on the situation.

I have been feeling something very similar for the past 4-5 months. My quads are absolutley dead, but my breathing is basically fine. I have been tested for almost everything and no blood test has found anything wrong with me. Finally one doctor told me that I was probably overtraining and recommended I take a month off. Normally I would have ignored this advice, but nothing else has worked (cutting milage, easier runs, etc.). I looked into the issue in Tim Noakes' book The Lore of RUnning and he says that when the problem lasts for a while, 5-8 weeks off may be necessary to fix it. Right now I have been off for 2+ weeks. In addition I am taking d-ribose. I don't know if what you have is what I have, but if it sounds similar maybe you might need to take the time off now, although I don't know if the time off will help.

I had a fever for two days, and then for like 4 days after i couldnt run at all. I would try to run and i would have to stop and walk after like a half mile.

I forgot to mention that i just kept on trying to run and slowly i got back in to doing my normal runs and workouts like before i was sick.

I was a 4:30 junior season miler who had a minor knee surgery and took my senior year light, trained 2 or 3 days a week and still ran a 4:50 mile with little effort in track. This is my freshman year of college, i didn't run xc with a broken toe, and have been running track for about 2 months now. I have run a 5:30 mile, and 11:10 3k ... I have no idea what is going on. Just like you, I can do my longer runs fine with my team, but track workouts I feel like I am running on empty. Speed is non-existant for me. I am very frustrated currently

I am having the exact same problem. Doctors found nothing in the blood tests. I backed off training for a few weeks and still feel like crap. Any other suggestions out there?

I had the same problem throughout my senior year of high school and freshman year of college. Didn't even approach my times as a junior in high school I was running so badly. I got my ferretin and iron tested, and it turns out my ferretin was 7. Go to your doctor and demand a cbc with iron and ferretin, if your ferretin is below 20 you know what your problem is.

Make sure your iron test is a serrum ferritin test. This is different that the typical iron test. It is the test all runners need to request.

And check thyroid - might as well. Effect metabolism, including body temp, heart rate, rate of recovery, etc.

I've been having a similar problem to what people described here and none of my blood work has shown anything that would be causing it. Does anyone have any idea of things I should look into?

What blood tests were done and what were the values? All good advice in the thread so far; check serum ferritin, not just iron. Hypothyroidism can cause similar symptoms, as can mono/epstein barr virus.

Make sure your sleep, diet, training load and recovery is all good before hunting for other chronic issues. It may be a simple fix.

I only have the values from my CPK and Ferritin test. All the test they ran so far are listed below:

CPK-290

Ferritin-91

Vitamin D-was low but at normal levels now

Mono-negative

Celiac-negative

Thyroid-normal

Electrolyte-normal

The CPK was taken after a full week of rest.

Your CPK is high, assuming they tested it in a way that is relative to standard reference range of 22-200 U/L. That indicates muscle damage. Had you been training harder or longer than usual in the lead-up to your week of rest? You might have just overtrained, or something else could be going on. High CPK could be from many things, so ask your doctor about that. You should also review the actual values for the "normal" tests to see if they are borderline high/low.