bikesrfun2ride

Hi all, hoping to get some input and hear other experiences. I realize "overtraining" is an overused and misunderstood term, but I'm currently dealing with a weird health issue that's kept me off the bike for about three weeks. The same symptoms came up last August and kept me off bike for over a month, which was the first time. It's back. Driving me crazy. I'll try to keep it short but here's some background:


31 year old male. Riding/racing pretty regularly for about 8 years, volume at 4-12 hours per week. Last year I turned it up a lot and would sometimes do 20+ hour weeks with occasional (2ish per month) 12+ hour intense rides. My favorite rides are really long/fast. Things that really test your limits. Last August I caught a cold, recovered but was very tired for about a week, then it developed into a constant dizzy/off balance feeling (not "spinning"), intense lightheadedness after standing (orthostatic hypotension), fatigue (could sleep 16 hours a day), heavy legs (short walks were difficult), and muscle soreness (a light 30 minute spin on trainer would leave legs sore/tired for several days, as if I did hard century or something).


Anyway, that went away after over a month and I got back into it. I got into Zwift over the winter. Occasionally racing and often doing 2+ hour intense rides. I also started weight lifting and doing yoga. But I was a lot more cautious with recovery and usually took an entire two days off/very easy each week and reduced volume/intensity a lot every fourth week. Standard stuff. Warm weather hits in March, hard to resist the long epic rides, did a 12 hour thing with a few 6 hour things and the usual 2 hour things sprinkled in there. I probably do too much, but I thought I was being careful about recovery, even taking 4-5 days off after the 12 hour ride. Mid-late march I caught a cold (nasal congestion, standard stuff), recovered but was very tired for a week, I kept riding a little and felt a strange disorientation and fatigue (power numbers were much lower than normal, 320 FTP could only be held for a couple minutes) but chalked it up to overall fatigue/disconnection we're all feeling right now. Then it the dizziness came on and it's still here with no signs of improvement after 3 weeks. I don't have a fever or stomach issues or coughing or nasal congestion. An easy yoga session will leave me sore for days. I've gone to full on rest with no exercise at all.


It takes a lot for me to go to the doctor, but last year was pretty bad and many visits didn't come up with anything. Blood tests were all normal, although cortisol was not tested (unsure if "adrenal insufficiency" is a real thing anyway). No sign of ear infection. Perfectly healthy. Went back again this time, same thing. No blood tests though, as the doctor didn't feel it was necessary to retest the same ****, which makes sense. So, yeah, I'm sort of losing my mind a bit. Feel confused and scatterbrained and mentally "slow"...typing this post feels way too challenging. Now depression is creeping in. Hard to explain to folks around me what's going on and why I just wanna lay in bed all the time. Doctor's only advice is to "stay hydrated" (I do). Daily tasks are challenging and riding a bike is out of the question. ENT and endocrinology specialists are currently unavailable due to the COVID stuff. When I bring up the possibility of overtraining they aren't really sure how to respond and brush it off. I don't blame them. But after eliminating so many other possibilities I keep going back to this. My cycling volume/intensity has certainly increased a lot in 2019 and the first part of 2020. Joe Friel's overtraining posts sometimes mention Lyme disease and mono as other possible causes. I got Lyme disease from a tick bite in 2012 bu it was caught early and was immediately treated with a round antibiotics. Up until last year I've never had any symptoms like this. And I had mono before as well. Docs say it's highly unlikely it's making another appearance.


Endless Google searches leave me more confused (shouldn't be doing this) and it's pretty hard to tell the difference between real science and hippy dippy bull**** alternative medicine things. I'm not asking anyone to tell me if I'm overtrained because that's impossible to say for sure I suppose, but hoping to hear if anyone has had a similar experience and what they ended up doing about it. If it isn't overtraining, I need to find out what it is. Most articles about overtraining don't talk about a constant dizzy/off-balance feeling. It's almost as if I'm always on a boat, or drunk, or my brain just needs an extra couple second to process stuff. Every single time I stand up I get very lightheaded and lose vision for about 5 seconds. Tired all the time. Legs are sore for two days after a walk around the neighborhood. Really hungry all the time even though I'm not exercising. Laying down is about all I can do to get rid of this feeling.


Ok, rant over, hope that made a little sense and wasn't too whiny. Could be worse obviously and don't want to complain, but man, it's just becoming quite frustrating. Doctor doesn't know, and currently can't see any specialists so I've hit a dead end and thought I'd ask around here. Thanks for any advice.

DrIsotope

I overreached/overtrained in the fall of 2016. Similar symptoms to what you've described, with two notable exceptions: I never got dizzy, and my sleep patterns went the complete opposite direction-- I was lucky to get 5-6 restless hours of sleep a night. Sometimes I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until 2-3am, despite getting up to get kids ready for school every day at 6am. Blood tests were all completely normal.

How's your heart rate, resting and during activities? My resting was constantly elevated-- like, I don't remember it dropping below the mid-70s for several months. During activities, it was difficult or impossible to get my HR into even Z3, and then my recovery rate was also bad. It was terrible, and took a good 6 months to recover. I kept riding all the way through-- even slow rolling in Z1 is better than doing nothing, for both recovery and mental state.

surak

Did you get your iron levels tested? Regular blood tests aren't sufficient, my RBC was low but within the normal range, iron was well below the standard healthy range and I had many of the typical symptoms of anemia.

Carbonfiberboy 

Are your shoulders really sore in the morning? Back so stiff you can hardly walk around?

canklecat

Could be an auto-immune disorder too. Only way to find out is with a complete physical. And be sure to find a competent, involved primary doctor who actually listens and doesn't dismiss complaints with comments like "Well, you're older now," etc.

I was diagnosed around the late 1990s with Hashimoto's, and didn't pay much attention to it. This was before Google and we had extremely slow and expensive internet (like, 1400 bps dial up), so I didn't spend much time on Lycos or whatever was available finding out more. Huge mistake.

All I knew was it affected the thyroid. I took whatever prescription I had for it, something like a minimal 25 mcg dose of synthroid, and never followed up on the problem. Over the years I developed a bunch of seemingly unrelated health problems, ranging from joints and muscles that ached for no reason, painful skin cracking from psoriasis, weakness, dizziness, crazy fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rate, borderline anemia, chronic inflammation (upper respiratory and joints) with elevated monocytes, etc.

Well meaning family and friends suggested stuff like fibromyalgia, but I've never met a doctor who genuinely regards this as a real disease. If you even mention it they'll start looking at you like a kook, malingerer, hypochondriac and prescription pain reliever mooch. None of the doctors I saw offered much help. So I just carried on, figuring "Oh, well, I'm getting older."

I also remember my dad not being particularly sympathetic when my symptoms first came up over 15 years ago. Later he developed somewhat similar symptoms that turned out to be due to Lyme disease. It changed his life for the worse, and he was more sympathetic toward my condition. Some folks don't believe "mystery" illnesses are real until it hits them.

Around 2017, a couple of years after I'd resuming bicycling for exercise, I slowed down on the MUP to chatter with an interesting family. A woman was walking with a parrot on her shoulder, and, of her two teenage sons, one was riding a unicycle while the other was juggling. While the woman and I were chattering about places to ride bikes, etc., out of nowhere she said "You need to get your thyroid checked out." Turns out she's an internist, and a very good one according to her glowing reviews online. Just from the little she could see, she spotted the problem.

Being an idiot (and also extremely busy as a caregiver looking after my mom who died a year later after complications related to Alzheimer's and a bunch of other health issues), I ignored the doctor's comments.

In spring 2018 I was hit by a car, breaking and dislocating my shoulder. In the ER they did a neck X-ray too, since my neck and back were broken in a 2001 wreck. They discovered a radiopaque mass larger than a golf ball. Turned out to be my thyroid, which was cancerous but had calcified and encapsulated the cancer, so there was little risk of metastasis. Surgery took care of the dead thyroid. I get checked twice a year for recurrence. And it took a year to get the right dosage of levothyroxine -- my endocrinologist was extremely cautious because I also have osteopenia and premature bone density loss.

Many of those pesky symptoms I'd experienced for almost two decades began to improve the past year. But I'm aggravated that other doctors I'd contacted dismissed my symptoms as inconsequential, and aggravated at myself for not pushing harder to find a competent doctor.

I'm not suggesting this is your condition. But it's an example of how difficult it can be to diagnose ailments that suddenly hinder the health of someone who's been very fit for years. Especially when some doctors don't seem interested. Too many tend to regard patients as malfunctioning machines and if they can't find an obviously broken part, they seem to lose interest or shrug us off as hypochondriacs.

Find a good doctor and you may get back to where you want to be quicker.

Iride01 

Did they test your serum b12 (cobalamin) level? It's a separate blood test from the normal panels they run.

You don't mention but one thing that caught my attention, and it's a symptom of so many other things. Do you have any nephropathy, sort of a phantom tingling or pain in your toes or fingers that you can't quite specify a location for? If you do, then I'd ask a doctor to include a serum b12 check with any other blood tests they might do.

If you are only going to GP or family doctor, then for many of the things that aren't readily apparent or easily diagnosed and many are only subjective in their diagnosis, so you will need a specialist.

Neurologist's seem to be pretty good at finding underlying causes for issues for many thing GP's don't take time to look into. So when things open back up, see if your GP will send you to one, or perhaps your insurance lets you go directly to a specialist without a GP's recommendation.

Otherwise, googling and advice from us and others can be problematic for self treatment. There are just too many things you might miss, misinterpret, or misunderstand when looking at the information out on the WWW. A lot of it half truths to suit their need to sell a product or service.

Carbonfiberboy 

Aha, maybe . . . Just read a JAMA analysis of a group of our local health care workers who got Covid. Symptoms about like yours. Other sufferers I've spoken with online say the worst part is the mental confusion and emotional roller-coaster, worse than the lungs, really. And a lot of myalgia (overall muscle pain). For right now, I'd treat yourself like you have it. Lots of fluids, lots of rest, isolation, online comm with friends, etc. Have your necessities delivered, etc. If you live with others, read: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...when-sick.html

Many people in the study had no fever, no cough, but tested positive. And BTW, the current tests being used in the US return 30-50% false negatives, so there's not even much point in being tested until the serological tests become available. That's a big big problem because there are many folks running around who've tested negative but have it and are spreading it.

re-reading your post . . . yeah, I think you got it.