Sounds like to me you're training too hard.

I'd suggest you do the blood tests, and see if it's all in order

Hi - I am usually the last person to advise seeking medical help, but at age 51 (different set of problems as an older female), I am now getting blood work done, and making sure hormones are balanced and everything checks out. Even though you are much younger, it still might be worth finding a trusted doctor to run some tests. It's always good to have bloodwork done as a baseline.

---

Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Since you have a coach I would think your weekly training load is appropriate for your abilities, etc. I would take a look at your diet. You say you are lean and eat very clean which could be the issue depending on how strict of a diet you are following. Eating chicken and rice for every meal (obviously an exaggeration) may work for your average gym go'er but for someone putting in 15-18hrs a week with intensity, etc. your probably running your body dry of important vitamins and minerals you need for recovery. If possible, it might be worth getting a blood test done to see if you have any deficiencies (iron, B vitamins, etc.) . Since you don't give any specifics about your diet this is only a guess. Also, depending on how lean you are, could be that you are your body fat is too lean year round for your body to handle the exercise load.

Thanks for your input! I eat clean, but I eat a lot- frequently dive into a veggie pizza etc. By clean I mean very little processed food and essential no fast food...lots of plants. I would say I am not runner triathlete lean, I am definitely one of the more chunky athletes at the level I am at, but could also be a strength of mine. Ive tried to count calories in the past/slim down and my training pretty quickly deteriorates. So I would say I perform better with a little bit on me (closer to 135 lbs than 130 or under). I also take daily supplements (iron, D, C, thyroid support, alt red.)

All good! Yes, I read on here about people trying to cut weight before races, etc. and seeing a drop in performance so that was one of my first thoughts. Have you talked with your coach about adjusting some of your pacing/power targets? Obviously you all are doing something right if you are maintaining 15-18hrs a week and seeing such good results (KQ, etc.) but if your week-in week-out consistency can increase by dropping your power/paces you might end up seeing greater improvement in the long run (and less mental burnout from staying off that struggle bus each week).

Welcome to the club of well-muscled endurance folks. You just get to deal with more muscle damage than your peers. Congratulations!

If you fall into the camp of "sprints well also" then you can probably have even better performance on a program with slightly less interval / high-intensity work in it because that's never going to be your weakness. Consider more time in z2.

You also have the propensity to burn more carbs per hour of training than more efficient slimmer folks. Fuel your training accordingly, especially if chronic fatigue mounts quickly when you do harder stuff. The difference in muscle mass between a more muscular vs. a less muscular triathlete can be substantial even if the lean body mass differences are minimal. It's pertinent to consider.

---

Dr. Alex Harrison | Founder & CEO | Sport Physiology & Performance PhD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
📱 Check out our app → Saturday: Pro Fuel & Hydration, a performance nutrition coach in your pocket.
Join us on YouTube → Saturday Morning | Ride & Run Faster and our growing Saturday User Hub

What Alex said in previous post!

If 15 - 18 hrs/week is the actually in motion training time, for an age-grouper*, the further questions I have would be:

- What is your work/job? How many hrs/week is that and what is it taking out of you?

- What distance races are you getting ready for? There is a MASSIVE range in triathlon.

- What's causing the "muscle fatigue" DOMS - running or cycling?

- When did you make the switch from just swimming to triathlon training and how long have you been at the 3 sport training?


* Depending on answers to the above questions - that may be about right for time volume or VERY high!

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

PATriathlete wrote:

Thanks for your input! I eat clean, but I eat a lot- frequently dive into a veggie pizza etc. By clean I mean very little processed food and essential no fast food...lots of plants. I would say I am not runner triathlete lean, I am definitely one of the more chunky athletes at the level I am at, but could also be a strength of mine. Ive tried to count calories in the past/slim down and my training pretty quickly deteriorates. So I would say I perform better with a little bit on me (closer to 135 lbs than 130 or under). I also take daily supplements (iron, D, C, thyroid support, alt red.)

I'd be mindful to ensure that you are eating enough carbohydrates. An app such as "Lose It", although typically used for weight loss, can also be helpful to ensure you're eating enough, which is often difficult for plant-based athletes.

If you are "Muscular" / have a high % of Type II fibers, you're likely inefficient; this means that you are both burning more calories and also a larger amount of carbohydrate.
Where are you located? I'd advise you have a test done to determine your submax fuel utilization akin to: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/...lutilisationarticle/

Additionally, what is your thyroid support supplement and why are you taking it?

I'm very leery of these supplements because they often have "Crushed Bovine Thyroid" as an ingredient (either listed or not).
https://www.consumerreports.org/vitamins-supplements/never-take-thyroid-supplements/


This is essentially supplementing with thyroid hormones, which will reduce your endogenous (self) product of thyroid hormones.
If you decide to stop these, I would begin to ween yourself off over the course of a month.

---

I talk a lot - Give it a listen: http://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/fast-talk
I also give Training Advice via http://www.ForeverEndurance.com

The above poster has eschewed traditional employment and is currently undertaking the ill-conceived task of launching his own hardgoods company. Statements are not made on behalf of nor reflective of anything in any manner... unless they're good, then they count.
http://www.AGNCYINNOVATION.com

I deal with a similar set of responses to training. I am 5'9" and 165 lbs, in spite of the fact I do almost no strength-training and instead spend 8-10 hours running and riding each week I still look more like a UFC fighter than a triathlete. As soon as I do any lifting, I bulk up to 180 lbs really fast. My dad was the same way and you just can't escape genetics. For the training regimen I have been on over the last few years, I should be skinny as hell!

For dealing with the mental side, here's what works for me:
1.Stop weighing yourself - you are lean, muscle is dense, so that number on the scale is not going to move much unless you start losing muscle, which isn't going to help.
2. Play to your strengths sometimes - when I do long events (IM, marathon, ultras etc) I accept that the skinny bastards are going to have an advantage over me, so I try to make sure I do "big" short distance events as well, where I can perform to my best. You have KQ'd, so you're clearly very talented. Maybe you could be an ITU AG world champ if you raced Oly/Sprint?
3. Reframe your expectations and self-talk - long distances trash muscles, so a muscly endurance athlete should expect to feel more sore, so see the muscle soreness as proof that you did the training "right", rather than as a sign of your body's weakness. If you need more time to adapt, you HAVE to take more time between hard sessions, otherwise you are just tearing your muscles down without allowing them to regenerate. You don't have to do as many hard sessions as your teammates to be able to be just as fast as them...
4. Lean and muscly looks way better than skinny and scrawny - we are lucky!

I was a hard core sprinter in the pool during my swim career, but ironically have a very low ceiling in cycling and running. In triathlon, I excel most at IM actually. race 70.3 around 200-210 watts and my 6x5 min power is about 250....so my 1 hour maybe around 230? At the same time, I wonder if I am unable to build the ceiling correctly due to my seemingly constant fatigue.

My job is currently very sedentary- full time grad student and online counselor.
I am training mostly for 70.3/IM distance....and I seem to excel at those as well far more than a sprint.
I think running takes the most out of me, but I feel that most people relate to the feeling running has on the body. Both seem hard...maybe not the helpful answer you were looking for.
I made the switch to triathlon about 4 years ago, and have been training quite hard since. I am an all-in type of personality :)

You mention your diet is clean and you eat a lot, which are both crucial for recovery. Plus: 1/ be sure you're getting lots of protein (egg whites, fish, chicken, plant sources, etc), 2/ eliminate ALL wheat - this was the most important change I made to eliminate constant fatigue and soreness. Try it for a least a few weeks to assess the affect.

What are your workouts on Mon-Wed-Fri & Sundays? Swim? Mixed? What's the RPE on those workouts?

How are you doing your workouts on Tues-Thurs & Saturdays? Not specific workouts but are you training? Racing to lead or maxing-out to stay with others in the lead pack or are you training within sub-groups of more uniformity? Or, are you setting targets and reaching your targets in ratio/proportion to the others' targets? On the intervals, did your HR re-set or are you starting the next interval before appropriate recovery when others were already re-set when the interval expired?

What is the make-up of the elite group you train with? Similar ages, gender, sports background, etc or is it mixed gender, runners/cyclist turned triathletes, with college-age to Gen Xers?

Answers to these will help focus on the physical outcomes of the mental comparisons you are making.

I can kinda relate as a college runner who raced at the 800M but could not run above a mile yet turned triathlete and was a MOP until an Master's Swim Coach (who coached college and Olympic teams and was KQ himself) gave me some common sense advice which stepped me up a few notches from Sprint thru IMs. "You workout too much." Something along the lines of you can't race in all your workouts like college when you had to race in practice to make the traveling squad. You can't race the short course folks at their speeds when you need to train for endurance, recover, and learn long-distance pacing. And vice-versa. You can't race elite long-distance runners when your fast-twitch swim-focused muscle fibers don't respond the same as theirs. You need to adjust as things change over time.

You've delivered a lot on your potential already by earning KQ sub-10 & FOP status. And your feeling that it's not a newbie issue is probably accurate. Possibly it's pivoting from college athlete into a maturing triathlete issue that may require tweaking for sustainability in the sport.

You are looking at a several of different ways to approach this, and you already received some great answers from others. You may be an outlier that would benefit from a blended solution that morphs over time.

https://www.palmtreesahead.com/
https://www.palmtreesahead.com/tactics2faster-new

I'll just say it again, it really sounds like you're training too hard.

Maybe there is some explanation for why you don't recover, maybe there isn't, and you just can't handle what you're doing. Why don't you cut back for a few weeks and see if you don't start feeling better? Who knows, your performance might even improve.

Agree. Squad environments can be very motivating but for already motivated young females (and I'm saying this as a female), they can also be destructive. When multiple workouts a week become essentially mini-races or even if comparison becomes too frustrating, as it sounds like may be the case here since you're mentioning other athletes' recovery, things can get self-destructive quickly. 15-18 hours a week is a ton for a 25 year old, especially with as much intensity as you describe.

It could be your body type, could be something totally different, but just sounds like the load exceeds what your body is able to handle, right now.

You seem to be a great athlete, so not sure what I can contribute

But for me, my legs always feel tired and rarely do I feel “fresh” (even during taper). But After 15-20 mins of warm up I’m feeling super good

At the risk of giving bad advice, Could it just how legs feel with all your training? You also didn’t mention protein - when I supplement my legs feel much better

If it takes you longer to recover from hard sessions, then don't try to cram yourself into the box that your squad is training in. Give yourself the time to recover before hitting it hard again and keep the non-hard days really chill. If you're able to, maybe explore going outside of the confines of a 7-day training schedule. Your body doesn't know it's Track Tuesday or Tempo Thursday or brick Saturday or whatever dumb names people give days of the week and corresponding sessions that are allocated for a specific day of the week. That's an arbitrary schedule that can ruin athletes because they're not ready to get after it if they're not recovered from the prior hard session. Fitness gains are made when you're recovering, and if it takes longer for YOU, so what! Your training plan should be adaptive to how YOU recover....and based on what you noted about racing well after a taper, it sounds like additional recovery between hard sessions is just what you need.

---

_________________________________
Steve Johnson
DARK HORSE TRIATHLON |

Are you taking a proper off season/recovery weeks? How is your sleep hygiene? Are you tracking metrics like heart rate variation?
You have crammed a lot already into your life, I am tired just thinking about that volume that you must have done etc, and that is with the benefit of being a bit older, wiser and not having likely the same degree of financial stress!

Sounds like your over training, over life-ing, over everything. Have to find some balance.

veggie pizza? are you more vegetarian? iron - the bioavailable kind easily found in red meats. Many B vitamins. It also has saturated fats (they are bad is a myth) that when they hit the liver turn into monousaturated fat that helps boost testosterone - you hormones are made from fat and cholesterol. Not saying you should eat red meat, but getting those vitamins, minerals and fats will require more work. a blood test will determine what is lacking