D3 Coach Needs Help With Struggling Runner

Every time I was in a rut in college I'd cut miles to maybe 30 weekly, and run everything too fast. Just like in high school. A week or ten days of this (with an hour long run on a Sunday), and I'd be ready to actually run again.

One more try on potential medical issues: Have his TSH and free T4 checked out, it may be worth a try having any thyroid issues ruled out. Intolerance to heat (or cold) can be a warning sign. If it is an issue in your runner, most likely its at a subclinical level.

It can absolutely be some kind of "hidden" physically problem (sickness) .

Weldon Johnson had probably run even faster than 28 if I had been the coach...…

Canova would never say a 32 10 k runner should be doing his normal pace easy distance on sea-level at 8:00 mile pace……

To your words of you being an experienced coach who have coached 100s of runners over the years , first with no Tempos and later in career with tempo training, I just say: You must have done the interval training the wrong way……

If doing the interval training correct at individual best paces, the runner will reach his/her optimal performance over the years. I know…..it`s a very common misunderstanding that interval training won`t prepare the runner for the demand that there isn`t recoveries in a race.

I have in just 3 years coached around 100 runners and ALL of them improved . Among them so far 10 winners of international races …….

Magic summer

SpringSticks wrote:

One more try on potential medical issues: Have his TSH and free T4 checked out, it may be worth a try having any thyroid issues ruled out. Intolerance to heat (or cold) can be a warning sign. If it is an issue in your runner, most likely its at a subclinical level.

This is very interesting. His roommate just told me when the air conditioning is on, he is walking around the dorm room with a coat on. Could this indicate a thyroid problem along with the fact he can't do anything in the heat anymore? How common are thryroid problems in young healthy 20 year old males? What is the cause in such cases?

Also I was thinking about LowT? Is this a possibility also?

Sleep is frequently overestimated and underrated. It was probably my downfall in college. An irregular schedule or simply just being 'used to' sleeping 1 hr less than is optimal can really compound. Hard to realize until you get into a better schedule. College is very tough for this...

Check his iron (ferritin) level and get back to us.

Did he start smoking or something?

I’m sensing a bit of a God complex going on.

D3 Coach wrote:

SpringSticks wrote:

One more try on potential medical issues: Have his TSH and free T4 checked out, it may be worth a try having any thyroid issues ruled out. Intolerance to heat (or cold) can be a warning sign. If it is an issue in your runner, most likely its at a subclinical level.

This is very interesting. His roommate just told me when the air conditioning is on, he is walking around the dorm room with a coat on. Could this indicate a thyroid problem along with the fact he can't do anything in the heat anymore? How common are thryroid problems in young healthy 20 year old males? What is the cause in such cases?

Also I was thinking about LowT? Is this a possibility also?

Thyroid problems for young men are rare, but not impossible. There is a vague link between hard training and triggering hypothyroid problems.

I developed hypothyroidism at 21 and my running performance fell off a cliff. My doc just happened to add TSH to my iron bloodwork... I was very lucky to catch it when I did.

notcoachjs wrote:

D3 Coach wrote:

[quote]SpringSticks wrote:

One more try on potential medical issues: Have his TSH and free T4 checked out, it may be worth a try having any thyroid issues ruled out. Intolerance to heat (or cold) can be a warning sign. If it is an issue in your runner, most likely its at a subclinical level.

This is very interesting. His roommate just told me when the air conditioning is on, he is walking around the dorm room with a coat on. Could this indicate a thyroid problem along with the fact he can't do anything in the heat anymore? How common are thryroid problems in young healthy 20 year old males? What is the cause in such cases?

Also I was thinking about LowT? Is this a possibility also?

As for the cause, it is usually an autoimmune disorder where the body attacks the thyroid. What causes THAT is up in the air... Likely a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Recovery is tough and takes a lot of patience. It takes a long time to dial in the right dosage and a long time for the body to fully recovery from low levels. A lot of docs are hesitant to start athletes at the high dosage they need, so if hypothyroidism ends up being the problem, make sure he takes time to find a doc that is sympathetic to his position.

Make sure he is always asking to see his lab numbers for himself. His numbers could be inside the reference range, but still elevated. Many docs will stop treating as soon as the patient is within the reference range, but some people will still experience symptoms at the upper end of the range. Most people feel best with a TSH of 1.2-1.5. Athletes are probably more sensitive to slightly elevated TSH than normal folk.

Of course I know less about what's going on than you do, but as you're looking for ideas...

As others have said, there could be some not obvious physical thing going on and nothing will get any better until that gets fixed. So the only answer here is to keep parading him to doctors until someone finds what it is. Until then any "running" advice will be useless. But there's also a good possibility that the reason no one's finding anything physically wrong is because there is nothing.

The obvious answer then seems to be that something's gone wrong with his training. But you aren't having him do anything outrageous, it's presumably the same kind of thing that's worked for most of the other runners you've coached and when that wasn't working it seems like you sent him back to what had worked well for him in high school and now that's not working either. And when training isn't right you usually get some stagnation or even mild performance drop offs, not the falling off a table kind of thing you're describing. So I don't think that tinkering with training is the answer. One thing you might analyze more, with and without him, is what was going on in that sophomore year when performances started slipping.

I think that leaves some mental issue(s) as the problem, You say it's not mental but I don't know how someone would know that about another person. Sometimes people don't even know that about themselves. I have seen this sort of thing before, though not to the extent you have here and what I found happening with such athletes is that their expectation in races goes from expecting success to fearing failure to believing that failure is inevitable and that it's just a matter of time before it strikes. From there, the athlete and coach begin making all sorts of training adjustments. But after a certain point all that those adjustments do is heighten the awareness of the athlete's struggles. I used to teach graduate courses to people wanting to become mental health counselors and one of the things I taught was a theory that after a time it's attempts to solve someone's problem that actually maintain the problem. I think that's what you have going on here.

That doesn't exactly tell you what to do here but from this perspective I think the best thing to do is to give up. Don't worry about the kid's performances and hope he can do the same. That doesn't mean to stop coaching him or dealing with him but try to find other aspects of being in your team for him to focus on, e.g., friendship with the other guys, overnight trips to races, satisfaction from doing his best in races no matter the outcome, etc. Analyze his races with him, how did he feel going in, did he have any expectations for his performances, in hindsight did they seem realistic, did he lose hope of meeting those expectations as the race went on and if so when and why, etc. Try to convince him to work on improving the runner that he is now rather than trying to match and better the runner he was as a freshman. A 9:10 3000 doesn't seem like much to an 8:45 guy but it's a big step forward for a 9:20 guy.

I always liked Jack Foster's line that went "I don't train. I just go for a run each day." Jack did not just jog around. A lot of those daily runs were burners but for Jack the main thing was enjoyment. Tell the kid to figure out what sort of daily running he thinks he'll be happiest doing and encourage him to do it, If that means some running on his own that's different than what the rest of the team does let him do it. But have him run with the team enough so that you and he still feel like he's part of the team.

I have no idea if any of this addresses the real problem or how effective it will be even if it does. But nothing that you've tried has worked and I think that when nothing that you've tried to solve a problem works, try nothing. Good luck.

notcoachjs wrote:

Recovery is tough and takes a lot of patience. It takes a long time to dial in the right dosage and a long time for the body to fully recovery from low levels. A lot of docs are hesitant to start athletes at the high dosage they need, so if hypothyroidism ends up being the problem, make sure he takes time to find a doc that is sympathetic to his position.

Make sure he is always asking to see his lab numbers for himself. His numbers could be inside the reference range, but still elevated. Many docs will stop treating as soon as the patient is within the reference range, but some people will still experience symptoms at the upper end of the range. Most people feel best with a TSH of 1.2-1.5. Athletes are probably more sensitive to slightly elevated TSH than normal folk.

Thanks for your imput. Blood test for TSH and T4 scheduled for Tuesday. Please tell me:

What were your times before you fell off cliff?

What were your times after you fell off cliff?

Are you back to your old best times?

What are your side effects?

What would happen to your overall health (not running) if you decided not to go on meds?

Thanks HRE for your post. Please keep in mind is NOT a situation where he is suddenly RACING bad. His races are perfectly in-line with his workouts - both are terrible. When evaluating his workouts, his race times are exactly what his workouts would predict, i.e. his workouts are at the level of a 9:20 guy and he is running 9:20 in the races. So this has nothing to do with race psychology issues/fear of failure etc, it is a physical condition.

I have a couple of thoughts:

1) You might consider another blood test. I had a female athlete a handful of years ago who had a similar issue at her first university, she quit running and transferred here for academic reasons. In between (without our guidance, before she was on our roster), she had a full blood workup done and they found her thyroid levels to be bottomed out. Once she was on medication to rectify this, we connected and she improved very quickly as a part of our team.

High School she ran 11:08 for 3200

First University she ran around 21:00 for 5,000 with no found reason for the decline

Sat out and ran casually on her own for a year while having blood tests done, taking thyroid medication about halfway through

First year with us she ran 17:46 for 5,000, after having her thyroid medication

It is not super common, but if you are grasping for answers, it might be worth looking at closer. Hormones can be a b**ch on an athletes body.

2) I have had 2 athletes on super intense acne medicine. One Accutane, the other on Spironolactone. Both were dramatically detrimental to athletic performance for the athletes. Spiro is a testosterone blocking agent, so that has very obvious implications. If he is one one of those (or something similar), I would refer them to a family or team physician and revisit that as well.

Good luck, I hate when I don't have a good answer for an athlete.

Feel free to email me these questions (click on my username).

notcoachjs wrote:

D3 Coach wrote:

Thanks for your imput. Blood test for TSH and T4 scheduled for Tuesday. Please tell me:

What were your times before you fell off cliff?

What were your times after you fell off cliff?

Are you back to your old best times?

What are your side effects?

What would happen to your overall health (not running) if you decided not to go on meds?

Feel free to email me these questions (click on my username).

Whoops, that didn't work. You can email throwaway17867 -at- gmail.com

+1 I have to say, even if you haven't dialed in on the exact problem this D3 coach is trying to figure out, this is a great, great analysis of general trends in this area. Sometimes the problem is continuing to focus on the problem and thus extend it. This sort of happened to me my second year in college....took months to slowly break out of it.

I was thinking exactly along these lines. And the more times coach insists that it's purely physical and not mental makes me believe it more. The psyche is extremely complex and there could be issues at hand that neither coach or athlete are aware of (or that athlete may be hiding from coach). You mention that the athlete is becoming increasingly frustrated with his performance. Even if that is a symptom of the slump and not the cause, it can clearly contribute to the situation moving forward. Why not see a sports psych just to attack that angle as well?

D3 Coach wrote:

Thanks HRE for your post. Please keep in mind is NOT a situation where he is suddenly RACING bad. His races are perfectly in-line with his workouts - both are terrible. When evaluating his workouts, his race times are exactly what his workouts would predict, i.e. his workouts are at the level of a 9:20 guy and he is running 9:20 in the races. So this has nothing to do with race psychology issues/fear of failure etc, it is a physical condition.

I thought a lot more about this situation after I posted. Your point about the races and workouts aligning to the same degree of awful is useful. I don't know that it means the problem's not mental. A mental problem could affect both workouts and races. And while I don't want to argue and know that you're familiar with the kid and I'm not, nothing you've posted supports the idea that the kid is suffering from a physical condition. By all means, keep looking for one but as of now you're just guessing.

But I started thinking that if it's not mental and not a health issue, what could be going on. I usually put on my "Lydiard hat" at such times and try to see the problem from his perspective. What he'd likely tell you is that the kid has been "racing his training," doing tempo runs and reps and trying to hit certain times for the distances but that the times he's been striving for have been too hard for him. So he has to work harder and harder to reach those times. Then he can't reach them at all but strives equally hard to come close. Eventually that's too hard and he works harder to come close to times that are close to his best ones an d so on. I see that you had him doing a timed tempo run for a specific distance and his times got slower and slower. That's exactly what Arthur would have expected from a guy who's racing his training.

I've seen comments along these lines from Barry Magee, Nic Bideau, Pat Clohessy, Rod Dixon, Lorraine Moller, and some other sharp folks whose names wouldn't mean much to you. Summarizing all the comments, traditionally when athletes get slower they and their coaches try to fix the problem by running more intervals and trying to do them faster but all that does is exacerbate the problem. What needs to happen is to back away from any kind of "effort" running for an extended time and just do easy distance work. It's summer, an ideal time for your guy to do this. Arthur had a prescription he always fell back on in such cases; "If you become over trained, go for long, slow, runs, so slow that grandmothers pushing baby carriages are passing you."