Ferritin Levels: Your Personal Experience In Regards To Performance

At my worst I was 11 (scale was like 20-250). At that point I was unable to train at all. My best has been 40s/50s for my PR days. I definitely find a correlation.

Camille Herron has some great info:

https://camille-herron.squarespace.com/blog/2011/05/25/the-little-things-iron-supplementation

https://camille-herron.squarespace.com/blog/2013/05/14/updated-bloodwork-discussion-and-a-new-iron-supplementation-regimen

Two years ago, I was running horribly and I had no idea why. A mile into the race, I was done. Blood test showed ferritin of 13. Four weeks of supplements knocked 50 seconds off my 5K time. A year later, I ran 1:55 faster than my last horrible race. Same course.

Ferritin is one of the single most important factors in runner performance. A ferritin level of 14 is unbelievably low.

We have seen athletes who report symptoms of extreme fatigue and feeling like they have no energy and ferritin is almost universally the cause.

Several years back we had a girl run over 6:00 in the mile...ferritin was below 14. Now is a 2:11/4:54 runner 24 months later.

Ferritin is the major iron storage protein. Runners will actually develop fatigue and decreased aerobic endurance performance before they develop overt iron-deficiency anemia because iron is also part of the cytochromes of the electron transport chain located on the inner mitochondrial membrane which produces ATP as fuel for skeletal muscle contraction through the process of oxidative phosphorylation. Right?

Some runners will develop symptoms and fatigue at ferritin levels below 50 ng/ml. Other runners will be OK and asymptomatic down to about 25 ng/ml.

Almost all runners will have symptoms at less than 20 ng/ml.

Usually there will be dramatic improvement with raising ferritin levels above 25 ng/ml and preferably higher.

It will have an effect on her energy levels (not an affect on her energy levels) or you could say low iron will affect her energy levels. Please learn proper use of language.

You should know this and you should also know about adequate ferritin levels in female and male runners if you are a high school coach. You should do some more reading on your own and be more prepared to help your runners. You are asking for advice at Letsrun.com instead of doing your own research. That is not a very smart idea coach.

Freshman year of XC I ran 17:39 PR and sophomore year I ran 17:43 the very first race and kept getting worse from there (19:01, DNF). Got tested and my ferritin was at 9 which is very rare for a male. It took a while for me to recover but now my fastest is 16:31... So it definitely made a huge difference for me. Not so much in my training but in the 3rd mile of a 5K is when I crashed and burned, where as now I'm able to stick it.

My son had his ferritin tested at the end of his junior year xc season, and it was 17. We suspect it was probably low during track season of his sophomore year the as well when he was running 4:39/10:05 for the 1600/3200. How much could one expect his times to improve if his ferritin is up to a more normal level (30-50 range)? He is taking iron supplements now and is looking forward to track season (and another ferritin test).

My daughter suffered with both low ferritin levels and low hemoglobin levels. Unfortunately, we discovered it well after her performance was suffering. We all kept writing it off to "mental" ability. It was tough because she was nailing her workouts for a long time, it just wasn't translating to her racing during track. Summer running/conditioning for XC is where it became apparent when she could no longer keep up with her group even on moderate-paced runs, or had to but her runs short. Her legs felt like lead and she wasn't able to breathe well.

We had her tested after a few weeks of supplements because we knew she was low, and her ferritin was under well 10, HGB was 11. She is also gluten intolerant so that was a factor, and of course she started getting regular cycles. Recipe for anemia. Low iron runs in my husband's family, so I feel dumb for not picking up on it earlier. She was so low that she received infusions. Her XC season was bumpy, but she still qualified to state as a team. Her times all season were 30 seconds to a minute slower than the year before, and she went from being #3 to anywhere from #3-7 on the varsity team. Ferritin was well over 150 by October, and that's when she started to move back up on the varsity roster. Unfortunately, she pushed hard and had a quad strain, which made her postseason interesting. PT to get through it, limped all through the state meet. Injuries are likely when the athlete starts feeling better and pushes too hard.

She is now feeling fantastic and is on oral supplements. They say if you're truly anemic, it takes 4-6 months to recover whether you get infusions or take supplements. Infusions will get the numbers up faster, obviously, but the older, smaller RBCs are still in the bloodstream. It's 120 days to renew the RBCs.

Bottom line, get the ferritin up before it becomes true anemia. Low ferritin alone has a significant affect on performance, and full-blown anemia is disastrous.

Wow. That escalated quickly. (btw, you forgot a comma.)

It's not as big a deal for the 1600 as it is with longer races, but I bet he can get under 4:30 and 9:50, and the rest is up to his training.

Thanks for the replies. I'll post his times and ferritin levels for reference in the spring. He trains seriously and qualified for state in cross country last fall but struggled on the last half the 5k races and on hills. He mentioned that his legs always felt heavy and was so disappointed with the last of improvement in his times from the previous year.

Just an aside: my daughter had her ferritin tested after a summer of poor road races this year, she's 16 yo and ran x-country for the first time. Her level was 8 which was shocking because she didn't feel tired. Tried Vitron C 65 mg but was too harsh on her stomach and then switched to a slow release of 45 mg. After 2.5 months her ferritin went up to 12 but still had a successful x-country season, 22:0x 5K pr which is in line with her track times. I'm hoping her levels still go up but her very low levels doesn't seem to affect her too badly. Of course maybe when it rises her prs drop so we'll see.

The "not feeling tired" is similar to my son's experience. He wasn't particularly exhausted and still had reasonably fast times (+/-16:45 for 5 km rolling hill cross country race) but just seemed to fade in the last half of races. As his training ramped up, he just got gradually slower and of course more frustrated. He seems okay taking the iron sulfate (325 mg) with orange juice at night, no stomach problems. We'll see how his ferritin level looks in a few weeks.

Get lots of HEME iron from steak, bison, and especially clams or chicken liver.

Consume lots of spinach (non-heme iron) with the meat.

Feosol Bifera is the very best supplement for absorption and still tame on stomach.

B12 and foliate are also vital supplements for red blood cell production in marrow. Avoid caffeine and calcium close to taking iron and reduce gluten too. (Absorption blockers)

Serious runners minimum ferritin counts before performance impairment: 30 for gals, 40 for dudes. If > 40 mpw throughout year = test before and during competition seasons ~ 4x year.

I had one of my runners - who was also my son - go flat. Heavy legs. Easy runs felt like slogs. Couldn't bring any quality to workouts.

He tested at 31, which is still considered normal range.

He didn't supplement, but we started eating steak twice a week and other iron-rich foods like spinach more often.

His performance bounced back after about six seeks and three months later he tested at 68.

My experience with my son, other runners and other coaches tracks with the poster above who noted that some endurance athletes can experience performance problems even with a not very low number.

This is a common enough problem that in a more perfect world, male endurance athletes and all female athletes would get tested once or twice a year.

I had a 10 month period where I felt awful. In shorter races I was slightly slower than previous years, but I just thought I wasn't in as good of shape. As I started to prepare for a marathon I began to think that it wasn't normal to feel like I was slogging through every run. I had forgotten what it felt like to go out and do a run without much thought. I ended up a DNF in the marathon, after feeling strangely awful within the first 10k.

A few weeks later I had to beg my doctor to test my ferritin, because he didn't believe that there is any science linking the issues I was having with ferritin levels. My bloodwork came back with a ferritin level of 6, and all the other blood values were totally normal. I also found of then that 1 year earlier, when I had similar bloodwork, my ferritin was only 10 but my doctor never told me because there are some scales that put 10 as the low in the "normal" range. I saw a hematologist since it was obvious that my primary care didn't know what was happening. The hematologist also wasn't aware of ferritin levels causing issues that runners with low levels frequently see, but he went back and did some research and said while there wasn't a lot of hard science to back it up, he found enough anecdotal evidence to support what I was experiencing.

I have been taking supplements for 2 years now and get tested every 6 months or so. My ferritin levels have still never been above 30 (as far as I know), but I feel normal in training and have run quite a few PRs. I guess for some people a lower number like mine can be normal.

YYYYYY wrote:

At my worst I was 11 (scale was like 20-250). At that point I was unable to train at all. My best has been 40s/50s for my PR days. I definitely find a correlation.

Camille Herron has some great info:

https://camille-herron.squarespace.com/blog/2011/05/25/the-little-things-iron-supplementationhttps://camille-herron.squarespace.com/blog/2013/05/14/updated-bloodwork-discussion-and-a-new-iron-supplementation-regimen

Those links don't work anymore. The updated link for her first post is:

The second post seems to have gotten lost in the updating of her website, but I did find this interesting discussion on Twitter that she shared:

Camille uses a ferrous sulfate solution in the photo she posted in that Twitter link. However, I have a sulfur intolerance. Does anybody know of a quality liquid iron supplement that is not bound with sulfur or a sulfurous compound?

observer 227 wrote:

Camille uses a ferrous sulfate solution in the photo she posted in that Twitter link. However, I have a sulfur intolerance. Does anybody know of a quality liquid iron supplement that is not bound with sulfur or a sulfurous compound?

Look for a ferrous gluconate elixer. It is a good substitute if you don't tolerate ferrous sulfate. Although it doesn't seem to be as potent at bringing ferritin levels back up, it may be easier on the body, and a safer substance for chronic supplementation.

another blog addressing its importance, recommends liquid iron with OJ:

http://sara-vergote.squarespace.com/blog/2017/1/16/take-your-iron