Jul 21 2023 34 mins 13
As I write this, we are in the build up for the fall marathon season. For the early October races, we are into about 6 weeks. More advanced runners are cranking into workouts while beginners are just starting more intensity. Regardless of the level of the runner, it is far too early to be complaining of the dreaded “cumulative fatigue.” Yet, so often I will see people saying that they are just completely out of it and not sure if they are going to make it. That is a tough spot to be with that long left to go. Like anything in life, it’s usually not just one thing that is causing the issue, but a combination of things. However, if we do fix one thing, a lot of times it leads to improvements in other areas. In this case, the usual culprits are training too hard, not adjusting for the heat, and underfueling. Over the years, we have addressed training too hard and not adjusting for the heat early on enough. I’ll list some references to key blogs below on those topics. For now, lets focus on underfueling and the consequences of not fueling for work.
Individualizing heat and humidity calculations
Heat Acclimatization
It is easy to overlook underfueling because a lot of times, the symptoms are the same as overtraining. The conundrum is that a person rarely wants to take time off, so they push through and ultimately it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They were underfueled, masked as overtraining, but never fixed the underfueling so their body eventually just broke down. Given that, what are we looking at with symptoms of underfuleing?
Symptoms.
While there are many more you can add to the list, I included what is most common with the athletes I work with. These seem to be the most common.
* Lack of energy. This is definitely the most common, but also the most likely to get confused with overtraining. If you are just dragging and you are only a few weeks into your training or even 2 months, then there is a good chance that being underfueled may be playing a part.
* Insatiable hunger OR No appetite. Many times, you’ll see people who are training for a marathon for the first time and they are eating everything in sight and at any point during the day. To me, these are usually newer runners who have never been in this position and don’t necessarily quite get how hard they are working. People who chronically eat less than what they really should be at seem to be able to suppress the feeling of hunger.
* Nagging injuries (slow to heal injuries too). I’ll see this a lot. As soon as we ramp up training, things go great for a few weeks, then it’s a gradual spiral to downtime from injury. The athlete seems to develop something regardless of the type of training, how slow they build up, or how long they have done recovery exercises. The first thing I’d look at is the amount and types of calories the person is eating.
* Frequent illness. Along the same lines, the athlete might be very susceptible to developing an illness like colds, flu, etc. Whether it’s injury, illness, or both- if they can’t stay healthy we have to look at why.
* Gradual loss in performance- As I mentioned people will assume they are in cumulative fatigue way before they really should be. Things will start out fine, or they might just be hard to begin with (depending on what the person is doing), and then just seemingly gets worse. The bottom line is, feeling like crap and getting slower is not cumulative fatigue.
