Remedies for Dead Legs (mainly quads) ruining training and awful on hills---after 4 weeks of mileage increase?

#1: There are no shortcuts.

Now that we have that out of the way, knowing how and when to rest is just as important is knowing how to train. Kudos for being willing to throw down as hard as you have this summer.

But any idiot can hammer until they just fall apart. Lord knows I did on more than occasion. What your body is telling you is that it needs time to rebuild from the load you have put it under. Allow it to do that and it will be stronger.

Main thing is don't panic about taking some time off. Its OK.

My advice: Take a couple days TOTALLY off (no pool, no cross training, no nothing), get a lot sleep, and eat well and as much as you feel like. Then jog easily for 20-30 minutes a day until you feel your legs start to come around, then ramp it back up. Ice baths are always a good idea.

The lesson to remember is to build in some recovery along the way so you don't crash like this again. But also understand that when you push to your limit, you are gonna crash once in a while. Just don't panic when it happens, listen to your body and give it what it is telling you it needs: rest.

Keep a few things in mind:

Your most important races are in October and that's when you should be peaking.

Getting beat in practice is no big thing because...it's practice. Chances are that your teammates are pushing at 100% to "win" at practice. Focus on real races and let them burn up in August.

Get a massage. It's the best $60 you can spend right now. Find an LMT who advertises deep tissue / sports massage work.

Keep easy days...EASY. Too many high school and college runners get caught up in ego and race every workout. (Let the freshman JV kids run too fast if they want to, don't ruin your season on a meanlingless early season distance run.

Cut back on your quality. Based on your post, you are doing 6-7 hard workouts a week. Cut your long run to 12 (sufficient for 5K XC) and do only two other hard runs (I recommend tempo and long hill reps.) All other runs should be jogs. It's far too early in the season to be sharpening your leg speed. Now is the time to improve LT and VO2. Lift only twice per week. You appear to be overtrained right now.

Good luck!

So you posted this at least 3 times with slightly different titles, and so it is clear you are in a panic.

Try taking 2 or even 3 days completely off. People get burned out - it happens. Your legs will come back.

There are no quick fixes when you need rest.

i'm the original poster and each time i hit post message my screen came up saying it could not find that site or something so i wasn't sure if it went through. sorry.

Though simple overtraining MIGHT be the cause of your symptoms, the fact that you definitely describe tired quads as the most specific symptom would lead me to suggest that you get your serum ferratin tested. "Tired quads" are one of the more frequent descriptions by individuals suffering from low serum ferratin. This would also explain your lowered level of performance in practice.

I have had several athletes in the last twenty years (since I became aware of low serum ferratin as a concern) describe similar symptoms. Almost all had low serum ferratin counts and were able to resume quality training within a few weeks.

Best of luck!

Contact Jose Canseco or anyone that he might have played with, they know what to do ?

how would i go about getting my ferratin (serum) levels back up to normal...pills, eating certain things, etc? what are the remedies for that condition?

You really need to chill out. You're obviously highly motivated in your running. You need to learn when to back off to allow your body to recover. Otherwise, you're eventually going to break down, and you'll be forced to take a much longer break.

Some of us -- including me -- never learn this lesson until it is too late. We push ourselves until we break down, we heal, and we go back to pushing ourselves until we break down. We repeat this pattern over and over, and we never learn. Instead, we curse our "bad luck" our entire athletic career.

A couple of days off to permit your body to recover is not going to turn you into a 250-pound lardass.

eat bananas

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

This really is no joke, it can help, the potassium!

oldguy wrote:

You really need to chill out. You're obviously highly motivated in your running. You need to learn when to back off to allow your body to recover. Otherwise, you're eventually going to break down, and you'll be forced to take a much longer break.

Some of us -- including me -- never learn this lesson until it is too late. We push ourselves until we break down, we heal, and we go back to pushing ourselves until we break down. We repeat this pattern over and over, and we never learn. Instead, we curse our "bad luck" our entire athletic career.

A couple of days off to permit your body to recover is not going to turn you into a 250-pound lardass.

Totally agree. It also sounds like you are racing your workouts and running too hard on your easy days. In your base, the effort comes in the form of the volume, not the intensity.

Might be a good time to review The Summer of Malmo:

I just graduated high school this year. Last summer I had whooping cough and had to take a whole month totally off from training. I was freaking out and assumed I would have a lousy cross country season from all that time off. Actually, in November, I made 1st team all - state.

Bottom line -- rest won\'t kill you. It may even help.

I would not go treating yourself for something like low serum ferratin unless you know that in actuality is the condition from which you are suffering.

If you did have it, I suspect a Doc would put you on liquid iron perhaps three times/week with orange juice (need the Vit C to facilitate absorbing the iron).

I strongly recommend you get your blood checked for hemoglobin and serum ferratin before treating yourself. This will probably cost about $50.

Best of luck!

This may sound crazy but just take a week or two off, you'll be amazed how fast you are when you come back. I'm talking from experience, i'm going to be a junior in high school this year and i bumped up my mileage from 40mpw to 75 mpw and i held it pretty much the whole summer, but when i went on a backpacking trek for 2 weeks and came back i thought i would be slow but after a couple of days of running i was faster than when i left. Your body just needs time to adapt to the stress you've put on it, which the other posters have already stated. Hope you take this advice into consideration and tell us how it works out.