One thing we learned at our conference this weekend was the importance of iron to a distance runner. Some of the best coaches in the country were telling horror stories of how their teams crashed and burned due to low iron levels in the blood. Even if the training went perfectly all season long, even if athletes never complained of any detrimental symptoms; things still went wrong when it counted, and these coaches discovered it was low iron levels. If they were trying to scare us, it kind of worked, but they offered us some solutions.
Before I get to the solutions, let me explain the problem. The U.S. Olympic committee has discovered that 90% of competitive female distance runners and 50% of competitive male distance runners have significant iron deficiencies. That is not good, obviously, especially since we are competitive distance runners.
What does iron do? Iron is essential for oxygen uptake in the blood. You can breathe in all the oxygen you want, but unless you have iron in your blood, the oxygen can't get to the muscles where it can go any good. Iron deficiencies are brought on through a number of things, including sweating, urinating, foot strike, as well as female monthly cycles. Stuff you can't really prevent, if you are a distance runner.
In fact, the U.S. Olympic doctors that we heard from said that there is no distance runner who can have too much iron. Normal sedentary people, sure, they run the risk of taking too much iron, but certainly not distance runners. In all of their years of testing runners, they have never seen a case where too much iron in a runner was detrimental. Which is good, it is like too much stretching, you really can't overdose on it if you are a big time runner.
So what's the solution? Some coaches said liquid iron drops, (expensive), other coaches suggested diets high in red meat (inconvenient). However, the host of the conference, the head coach at Grinnell College, suggested this. All-natural, Dessicated Liver Tablets, available at any drug store or vitamin store. (Yeah, they sound gross, but they are just pills.) By taking this form of ferrous iron, you can get the oxygen to stick your blood, and that allows the oxygen to get to your muscles.
This makes sense to me in a couple of ways. Physiologically, it makes total sense, Physiologically, it makes sense to me as well. Think about it, you spend all season long committing yourself to becoming a faster runner. You put in the miles, you hammer all the intervals, you eat well, you drink enough water, you get enough sleep. Imagine if you didn't do well at the end of the year, even with doing everything that was asked of you, and you found out the reason was because of low iron levels. I would be devastated, because that is the easiest problem to solve. A pill before you go to bed with a glass of orange juice every night. (Vitamin C helps with the uptake of iron, while calcium inhibits it. So take your iron at night, and your calcium in the morning.) It's not an overnight fix, it is something you need to start now if you want to get and stay healthy in your blood. But, it is safe and it is natural. It's insurance for your training.
This is a supplement that is totally legal and ethical. Frank Shorter, the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, was presenting at the conference, and he thought the D.L.T.'s were a great idea. However, talk about this with your parents. Have the conversation. Explain to them what I tried to explain to you. Do not take anything without your parents knowledge. Have your parents contact me if they have more questions about it. But, it seems to me that the insurance you can buy for 4 bucks a month or so would be worth it, especially with all of the hard work you are putting in.
See you all for Spenst Hill on Monday!
SEP
UPDATE: If you buy iron supplements, don't buy multi-vitamins, that not the best iron for maximum absorption. Buy heme iron, ferrous iron. It is absorbed best with vitamin C.
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