Right after she had Covid.

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Let food be thy medicine...

Presuming you are an MOP age grouper, I would guess there are far too many low hanging improvement performance for you to work on before worry much about being too skinny, or lacking the power either in the swim or on the bike. But even then, chances are, the answer is no. Back to training :)

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Vinnie Santana, Multisport Coach
http://www.ironguides.net
* * * Your best is our business. * * *

For most Age Groupers the problem is the opposite, you can literally see the low hanging fruit they are carrying around the race course.

The podium in Kona this year was overwhelmingly skeletal with LCB, Haug and Phillip. Of course there are outliers like Blu but if you consider the full dataset of Ironman champs over the years they're pretty much all rail thin.

Yes you can be too thin BUT it's very very difficult to reach that level

As someone who is 5'10" 130lbs, I definitely think my performance would improve if I were 10 to 15 pounds bigger. I have never been able gain weight and have a very small frame.

easy,, eat more move less. but if you are looking to gain quality weight (muscle), yes it is difficult

Biggest I have ever gotten to was 145lbs a few years ago by weight training and purposely eating as much as possible along with gainer. I always felt like crap from eating so much and finally decided to be happy with being the small guy and do what I can with what I have.

Why do people think weight automatically makes you a stronger/better athlete? That's not how it works.

Yes, if you were undereating and you start fueling properly you will gain performance, with that sometimes can come weight. If that's the case, you may think additional weight made you stronger however it was just the fueling. You can also fuel properly and not gain weight. If you are eating properly and thin, you can absolutely be performing to the maximum. Now, there will be outliers here for people that have real medical conditions for being underweight (and usually fueling improperly), such as anorexia, anemia, red-s, etc. Fixing those medical problems often will come with weight gain and performance increase. It's about finding the happy medium on low weight, where you aren't so low that you are creating medical problems for yourself.

However, you don't gain 5% more watts with 5% more weight, that's not how it works.

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My Strava | My Instagram | Summerville, SC | 35-39 AG | 4:41 (70.3), 10:05 (140.6) | 3x70.3, 1x140.6 | Cat 2 Cyclist