Just a small personal victory, and an excellent learning experience.
I’m usually a decent runner for someone who doesn’t put extreme efforts into training. I’ve often been in the first 1/3 to 1/10 of finishers and have sometimes been at the top of my age group.
Well, I’ve been struggling really badly with my pace since I had COVID a year ago, and I had been really careful about getting back into running (took 10 weeks off) as I was so worried it was long-COVID.
My pace went up about 2-3 minutes a mile, and I ended up feeling like I was shoved down. This summer I had to stop mid-run, and that never happened before in all the years I’ve been running. That’s when I reached out to my doctor.
I got my bloodwork done in the fall, and it turned out I had both anemia and super low vitamin D (both D3 and D2—even though take a combo calcium/D tablet). In retrospect, it would have been wise to have my bloodwork done earlier for nutritional deficiencies as COVID screwed up my periods. I kept getting them every two weeks for a couple months (totally a guarantee to end up with anemia), but I never thought of it.
So I started taking supplements and noticed within a couple of weeks that my heart rate started going back down, and my runs felt much easier.
When I ran an 8K last weekend I didn’t PR, but I’m so happy with the time. I did much better than I thought I would. My pace actually beat my 5K pace from late August! I’m hoping to speed up over the winter more as I work on my nutrition and upping my muscle-to-fat ratio.
One of the surprising things about running is how often it surfaces weird issues for me to solve. I’ve learned so much about my body and its baseline performance over the last couple years.
If you were running in Texas, we may have been at the same event! Congrats on the improvements. It’s frustrating when mysterious health issues slow us down, but so encouraging when they finally improve.
Thank you! :D
I’m actually in Maryland. I usually do a bit 5 miler here every year, but the race changed owners so I tried this 8K that was run by a local running group and loved it! I’m hoping to do some small 5Ks over this winter to see if I can speed up my pace more.
My first “fast” 5k was about 32 minutes. For some reason running at that pace just felt so much more natural and fun than running at a 36+ minute 5k pace. I’m really looking forward to being able to run at that pace for longer distances.