May 12, 2025 • 13 mins
Iron Deficiency and Marathon Training: My Unexpected Setback | Zero to 26.2
In this episode of Zero to 26.2, join me as I navigate an unexpected hurdle in my marathon training journey. After feeling unusually exhausted and dealing with a persistent calf injury, I discover that iron deficiency might be the culprit. Follow along as I delve into my lab results, including serum iron, total iron binding capacity, percent iron saturation, and ferritin levels, and discuss the importance of proper iron levels for athletes, especially endurance runners. Learn why iron is crucial for oxygen delivery, recovery, and overall performance. Stay tuned as I talk with my doctor to find solutions and get back on track to reach my marathon goal. Don't forget to share this journey with someone you love and stay updated for more insights and progress!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey friends, welcome back toZero to 26.2, the series where I
am taking you behind the scenesof my journey from Couch or not
running all the way to my firstmarathon.
And today I wanted to sharesomething that caught me
completely off guard.
But first, here's a little videofrom week two of my training.
Kimberly (00:25):
Okay, friends, I just finished my first week out, my
first workout of week two, andit was four minutes running, one
minute, walking times five.
And as you can hear, I'm stillwinded.
Got a long way to go, but wegotta start somewhere.
(00:48):
Just watching that video andlistening to it, I hear how
tired and out of breath I sound.
Yes.
I just ran four minutes at atime.
Wasn't crazy.
Definitely wasn't marathon pace.
It definitely wasn't eight,nine, even 10 minute miles.
(01:08):
And so this is where I'm tellingyou.
Things are shifting and I wantto share the journey with you
and it's still unfolding, so Idon't have the answers, but I
wanna share where, where I'm at.
So that was week two and weektwo, I was finally feeling like
I could at least stay running,even though it was real slow,
(01:32):
but I still felt exhaustedafterwards and not just.
Like, okay.
I haven't run in a while, butcompletely wiped out.
Like I need a nap just to makeit through the rest of my day,
kind of tired and bone weary, Ithink is the best way I could
describe it.
And so it was very interestingto me.
(01:54):
And then through the next week,kept running, had different
exercises, different um.
Basically goals that we had foreach workout and through the
Runna app, I used a 5K trainingto start and it had me doing
different intervals anddifferent things.
And it was Sunday night and I,or Sunday morning, excuse me,
(02:18):
and I had to do a, an intervaltraining and it was like 200
meters on.
And then 60 or 90 secondswalking.
So nothing too crazy, but it didwant you to pick up the pace.
And so for that 200 meters to gosomewhat fast, which I felt like
I could do, and in we had torepeat that six times.
(02:41):
So it was six of thoseintervals.
On the fourth, I think, or thefifth one.
When I hit that interval and Iwas running, part of it was
downhill, and then the otherpart of it was uphill, and there
was something on that uphillwhere I pulled my left calf and
it hurt to walk.
I had two more intervals to do,which was then down.
(03:05):
I was going back, so it was downthat hill and back up again, and
I was able to do part of it.
I did have to walk some of thatinterval because I, my calf was
hurting so bad I couldn't do itand was able to finish out the
next one'cause it was relativelyflat and finished out that
session and I thought, noworries, no big deal.
(03:26):
I can just move my training outa little bit, take a day or two
off.
My calf will recover, noproblem.
However, my calf didn't recover,and that was weird.
It was day four, day five.
I could still feel it when I waswalking.
Every time I try to just jog alittle bit to see how I could do
maybe on a run, it just flaredback up and it just was not
(03:50):
recovering.
So I was like, okay, well we'lljust take this week off.
So that whole week and then intothe next week.
So now it's been two weeks sinceI've last run, and it was still
hurting up until about three orfour days ago.
But because I wasn't recoveringand because my everything felt
(04:11):
bone weary, my husband and I,Darrel, we play cards in the
evening.
Um, sometimes after dinner we'lljust sit there and play cards
and just shuffling the cards myforearms felt, heavy and tired
and just so weak.
And I was thinking, okay, I'm45.
My, I'm having some fluctuationsin, in things that maybe, maybe
(04:37):
that's what it was.
And I was thinking, okay, it'sprobably my hormones.
You know, I'm not able torecover because, you know, maybe
those testosterone levels areoff or those estradiol levels
are off.
And that's, that's the issue.
So I went into my doctor and wegot some labs drawn this past
week, and so this is where Iwanna share with you what's
going on in the journey so wecan follow this and see what
(04:58):
happens from here.
So talk to my doctor, tell himall the things.
And of course he is like, oh, weshould check your thyroid'cause
that's another thing that canmake you feel really tired.
Uh, and I asked him to check myiron panel because I've never
been anemic, but I've alwayswondered.
Um, and the past when I've run,I've always wondered if my
(05:19):
ferritin was low.
And so we did all that.
So we got labs back and.
As I started coming in, I cansee'em come through my app and
CBC, which is your completeblood count, looked normal, not
anemic.
Everything looks good.
So that would tell us if youhave some type of iron
deficiency anemia or amicrocytic anemia or different
(05:42):
types of anemias in there.
But I wasn't, I looked good.
And then comprehensive metabolicpanel, which checks kidney
function, liver function, all ofthat also looked good.
I'm not diabetic.
Fantastic.
Thyroid came back totallynormal.
Awesome.
And then we started to get thehormone levels back.
And all of those looked good.
My estradiol, my progesterone,all of that's in normal ranges.
(06:06):
And then my iron panel came in.
And so this is, this is wherethings start to get interesting.
So I'm not anemic, but when Ilook at my iron panel, a couple
of things are off.
We're gonna talk about fourdifferent things that we see in
iron panels.
So your serum iron, your totaliron binding capacity, your
percent iron saturation, andthen your ferritin levels.
(06:29):
So your serum iron is basicallythe amount of iron floating
around in your blood right now,ready to be used.
And then, so that was normal,but it was on the low end of
normal.
Okay.
Not, not so sure what to doabout that.
It's just, it's normal, but low.
So the next one is the totaliron binding capacity, and this
shows how much iron your bloodcould carry if it had more.
(06:54):
And so I think of it as thenumber of empty seats on the bus
waiting for iron to get on.
So we have all these seats.
The higher the total ironbinding capacity is, it means.
We can take on more passengers,that bus is empty and you can
add more people in.
And so that total iron bindingcapacity for me was high.
(07:16):
Still in the normal range, buthigh.
It just tells me that we're we,we can take on much more iron.
And then the percent saturation,this is the percentage of seats
that are actually filled withiron.
So if you're on the iron bus,how, what percentage of seats
are actually filled?
So normal is 20 to 50%, and minewas down at 11%.
(07:37):
So only 11% of my seats are fullof iron.
And the one thing I haven'tgotten back yet is the ferritin
level.
And ferritin is like the ironstorage tank, right?
So it tells us how much extrairon we have saved up for later
use if we need it.
(07:59):
So right now what we know orwhat I know is that.
I am not anemic, but I'mdefinitely iron deficient.
And so this can be a functionaliron deficiency.
And so now the question is whyAnd now what do we need to do
about it?
And so I'm still in that, um.
(08:23):
That puzzle of trying to figureout what's caused it, what do we
need to do?
Obviously we will start takingsome iron supplements, but it
depends, right?
It could be an absorption issue.
If I'm not absorbing it.
I can supplement as much as Iwant and it may not bump it too
much.
So we've got some moreinformation to figure out, but
it now, it makes a lot of senseof why I feel so exhausted,
(08:44):
because I don't have enough irongoing in.
So let's break down iron alittle bit more and why it's
important, especially forathletes and for those of you
who are athletes and especiallyendurance runners, even if
you're feeling tired, if youhave fatigue and you go into
(09:08):
your doctor and they check yourC, B, C and you're not anemic,
that may not be the full story.
So an iron panel can be reallyhelpful.
So when you think about iron,iron is the oxygen delivery guy,
it helps your red blood cellscarry oxygen from your lungs to
(09:29):
your muscles.
So when you're training, yourmuscles need a lot more oxygen
to keep going.
So let's think about that.
Here I am, I have not enoughiron in my blood.
I'm not able to bind and carryas much oxygen as I need to, to
my muscles, which is why I feltso freaking exhausted because my
(09:49):
muscles were literally.
Suffocating, right.
Wanted to say starving, butthey're not starving.
But they're starving for oxygen.
And so when we have low iron.
We have low energy.
If you don't have enough iron inyour body, you can't move that
oxygen.
Well, you feel tired, you feelweak.
(10:09):
You feel out of breath, right?
So listen to that.
Go back and listen to metalking.
I couldn't breathe and I waslike, I.
Done.
I was walking, I had beenwalking for a while before I did
that video.
And here's the other thing.
Your legs feel heavy likebricks, even my arms feel it.
And that means my heart and mylungs are working even harder,
over time, to get the oxygenthat I need for the demand that
(10:35):
I'm putting on my body.
And it's having to work overtimebecause I don't have the, a way
to carry that oxygen efficientlyto my body.
So another thing to think aboutthat training actually burns
through your iron fasterexercise, especially running,
can use up your iron storesfaster through red blood cell
turnover and just that extrademand for oxygen for a
(10:59):
prolonged period of time.
So for those endurance athletes,this can be very important for
you to know what your iron'sdoing and making sure that those
stores are good and healthy, andyou have that backup.
When our iron is low, ourrecovery gets harder.
This is 100% what I experiencedin the last two weeks.
(11:23):
My muscles were not repairinglike they should have.
What would normally take me acouple of days to recover and be
like, I'm good.
Took me two weeks.
That was crazy.
And so when our iron's low, weare not gonna bounce back as
fast as otherwise we would have,so we may have more soreness,
(11:43):
more fatigue, and thinking aboutlike, if you're doing okay and
you're not necessarily havingany injuries, you may just feel
like you're plateauing and youjust can't get to that next
level.
And then the other thing is thatiron just helps the engine run
more smoothly.
(12:04):
Think of iron like oil in a car.
Without enough iron things aregonna start grinding,
overheating, breaking downbecause I'm not getting oxygen
to my muscles and to my tissueswhere they need to be.
Even though I was giving my bodyfuel, food, water, sleep, I
just, I couldn't keep up withthe demand I was putting on my
(12:24):
body.
And so that's where I'm at, andI will keep you posted as we
keep going.
So no, I have not start runningagain, because now I need to
talk with my doc and figure outwhy.
So that now that's that nextquestion.
I really do need to starttraining, here pretty quickly,
so we gotta get on it because I,I did, I signed up for a
(12:46):
marathon in September, September13th.
So we gotta go.
So we'll see what happens.
So there you have it.
Thanks for being here with meand being on this journey with
me.
It has already taught me so muchand we're just getting started.
I think the biggest thing so farfor me that I'm learning in
(13:09):
this, but in also a lot of otherareas of my life, is listening
to my intuition and reallypaying attention to how I feel.
What is my body telling me?
What, what is my gut telling me?
These things are very important.
So thank you again for being onthis journey with me.
(13:31):
I'll keep you posted as we go.
If this resonated with you,please share with someone you
love, and until next time, havea good one.
Hey friends, welcome back toZero to 26.2, the series where I
am taking you behind the scenesof my journey from Couch or not
running all the way to my firstmarathon.
And today I wanted to sharesomething that caught me
completely off guard.
But first, here's a little videofrom week two of my training.
Kimberly (00:25):
Okay, friends, I just finished my first week out, my
first workout of week two, andit was four minutes running, one
minute, walking times five.
And as you can hear, I'm stillwinded.
Got a long way to go, but wegotta start somewhere.
(00:48):
Just watching that video andlistening to it, I hear how
tired and out of breath I sound.
Yes.
I just ran four minutes at atime.
Wasn't crazy.
Definitely wasn't marathon pace.
It definitely wasn't eight,nine, even 10 minute miles.
(01:08):
And so this is where I'm tellingyou.
Things are shifting and I wantto share the journey with you
and it's still unfolding, so Idon't have the answers, but I
wanna share where, where I'm at.
So that was week two and weektwo, I was finally feeling like
I could at least stay running,even though it was real slow,
(01:32):
but I still felt exhaustedafterwards and not just.
Like, okay.
I haven't run in a while, butcompletely wiped out.
Like I need a nap just to makeit through the rest of my day,
kind of tired and bone weary, Ithink is the best way I could
describe it.
And so it was very interestingto me.
(01:54):
And then through the next week,kept running, had different
exercises, different um.
Basically goals that we had foreach workout and through the
Runna app, I used a 5K trainingto start and it had me doing
different intervals anddifferent things.
And it was Sunday night and I,or Sunday morning, excuse me,
(02:18):
and I had to do a, an intervaltraining and it was like 200
meters on.
And then 60 or 90 secondswalking.
So nothing too crazy, but it didwant you to pick up the pace.
And so for that 200 meters to gosomewhat fast, which I felt like
I could do, and in we had torepeat that six times.
(02:41):
So it was six of thoseintervals.
On the fourth, I think, or thefifth one.
When I hit that interval and Iwas running, part of it was
downhill, and then the otherpart of it was uphill, and there
was something on that uphillwhere I pulled my left calf and
it hurt to walk.
I had two more intervals to do,which was then down.
(03:05):
I was going back, so it was downthat hill and back up again, and
I was able to do part of it.
I did have to walk some of thatinterval because I, my calf was
hurting so bad I couldn't do itand was able to finish out the
next one'cause it was relativelyflat and finished out that
session and I thought, noworries, no big deal.
(03:26):
I can just move my training outa little bit, take a day or two
off.
My calf will recover, noproblem.
However, my calf didn't recover,and that was weird.
It was day four, day five.
I could still feel it when I waswalking.
Every time I try to just jog alittle bit to see how I could do
maybe on a run, it just flaredback up and it just was not
(03:50):
recovering.
So I was like, okay, well we'lljust take this week off.
So that whole week and then intothe next week.
So now it's been two weeks sinceI've last run, and it was still
hurting up until about three orfour days ago.
But because I wasn't recoveringand because my everything felt
(04:11):
bone weary, my husband and I,Darrel, we play cards in the
evening.
Um, sometimes after dinner we'lljust sit there and play cards
and just shuffling the cards myforearms felt, heavy and tired
and just so weak.
And I was thinking, okay, I'm45.
My, I'm having some fluctuationsin, in things that maybe, maybe
(04:37):
that's what it was.
And I was thinking, okay, it'sprobably my hormones.
You know, I'm not able torecover because, you know, maybe
those testosterone levels areoff or those estradiol levels
are off.
And that's, that's the issue.
So I went into my doctor and wegot some labs drawn this past
week, and so this is where Iwanna share with you what's
going on in the journey so wecan follow this and see what
(04:58):
happens from here.
So talk to my doctor, tell himall the things.
And of course he is like, oh, weshould check your thyroid'cause
that's another thing that canmake you feel really tired.
Uh, and I asked him to check myiron panel because I've never
been anemic, but I've alwayswondered.
Um, and the past when I've run,I've always wondered if my
(05:19):
ferritin was low.
And so we did all that.
So we got labs back and.
As I started coming in, I cansee'em come through my app and
CBC, which is your completeblood count, looked normal, not
anemic.
Everything looks good.
So that would tell us if youhave some type of iron
deficiency anemia or amicrocytic anemia or different
(05:42):
types of anemias in there.
But I wasn't, I looked good.
And then comprehensive metabolicpanel, which checks kidney
function, liver function, all ofthat also looked good.
I'm not diabetic.
Fantastic.
Thyroid came back totallynormal.
Awesome.
And then we started to get thehormone levels back.
And all of those looked good.
My estradiol, my progesterone,all of that's in normal ranges.
(06:06):
And then my iron panel came in.
And so this is, this is wherethings start to get interesting.
So I'm not anemic, but when Ilook at my iron panel, a couple
of things are off.
We're gonna talk about fourdifferent things that we see in
iron panels.
So your serum iron, your totaliron binding capacity, your
percent iron saturation, andthen your ferritin levels.
(06:29):
So your serum iron is basicallythe amount of iron floating
around in your blood right now,ready to be used.
And then, so that was normal,but it was on the low end of
normal.
Okay.
Not, not so sure what to doabout that.
It's just, it's normal, but low.
So the next one is the totaliron binding capacity, and this
shows how much iron your bloodcould carry if it had more.
(06:54):
And so I think of it as thenumber of empty seats on the bus
waiting for iron to get on.
So we have all these seats.
The higher the total ironbinding capacity is, it means.
We can take on more passengers,that bus is empty and you can
add more people in.
And so that total iron bindingcapacity for me was high.
(07:16):
Still in the normal range, buthigh.
It just tells me that we're we,we can take on much more iron.
And then the percent saturation,this is the percentage of seats
that are actually filled withiron.
So if you're on the iron bus,how, what percentage of seats
are actually filled?
So normal is 20 to 50%, and minewas down at 11%.
(07:37):
So only 11% of my seats are fullof iron.
And the one thing I haven'tgotten back yet is the ferritin
level.
And ferritin is like the ironstorage tank, right?
So it tells us how much extrairon we have saved up for later
use if we need it.
(07:59):
So right now what we know orwhat I know is that.
I am not anemic, but I'mdefinitely iron deficient.
And so this can be a functionaliron deficiency.
And so now the question is whyAnd now what do we need to do
about it?
And so I'm still in that, um.
(08:23):
That puzzle of trying to figureout what's caused it, what do we
need to do?
Obviously we will start takingsome iron supplements, but it
depends, right?
It could be an absorption issue.
If I'm not absorbing it.
I can supplement as much as Iwant and it may not bump it too
much.
So we've got some moreinformation to figure out, but
it now, it makes a lot of senseof why I feel so exhausted,
(08:44):
because I don't have enough irongoing in.
So let's break down iron alittle bit more and why it's
important, especially forathletes and for those of you
who are athletes and especiallyendurance runners, even if
you're feeling tired, if youhave fatigue and you go into
(09:08):
your doctor and they check yourC, B, C and you're not anemic,
that may not be the full story.
So an iron panel can be reallyhelpful.
So when you think about iron,iron is the oxygen delivery guy,
it helps your red blood cellscarry oxygen from your lungs to
(09:29):
your muscles.
So when you're training, yourmuscles need a lot more oxygen
to keep going.
So let's think about that.
Here I am, I have not enoughiron in my blood.
I'm not able to bind and carryas much oxygen as I need to, to
my muscles, which is why I feltso freaking exhausted because my
(09:49):
muscles were literally.
Suffocating, right.
Wanted to say starving, butthey're not starving.
But they're starving for oxygen.
And so when we have low iron.
We have low energy.
If you don't have enough iron inyour body, you can't move that
oxygen.
Well, you feel tired, you feelweak.
(10:09):
You feel out of breath, right?
So listen to that.
Go back and listen to metalking.
I couldn't breathe and I waslike, I.
Done.
I was walking, I had beenwalking for a while before I did
that video.
And here's the other thing.
Your legs feel heavy likebricks, even my arms feel it.
And that means my heart and mylungs are working even harder,
over time, to get the oxygenthat I need for the demand that
(10:35):
I'm putting on my body.
And it's having to work overtimebecause I don't have the, a way
to carry that oxygen efficientlyto my body.
So another thing to think aboutthat training actually burns
through your iron fasterexercise, especially running,
can use up your iron storesfaster through red blood cell
turnover and just that extrademand for oxygen for a
(10:59):
prolonged period of time.
So for those endurance athletes,this can be very important for
you to know what your iron'sdoing and making sure that those
stores are good and healthy, andyou have that backup.
When our iron is low, ourrecovery gets harder.
This is 100% what I experiencedin the last two weeks.
(11:23):
My muscles were not repairinglike they should have.
What would normally take me acouple of days to recover and be
like, I'm good.
Took me two weeks.
That was crazy.
And so when our iron's low, weare not gonna bounce back as
fast as otherwise we would have,so we may have more soreness,
(11:43):
more fatigue, and thinking aboutlike, if you're doing okay and
you're not necessarily havingany injuries, you may just feel
like you're plateauing and youjust can't get to that next
level.
And then the other thing is thatiron just helps the engine run
more smoothly.
(12:04):
Think of iron like oil in a car.
Without enough iron things aregonna start grinding,
overheating, breaking downbecause I'm not getting oxygen
to my muscles and to my tissueswhere they need to be.
Even though I was giving my bodyfuel, food, water, sleep, I
just, I couldn't keep up withthe demand I was putting on my
(12:24):
body.
And so that's where I'm at, andI will keep you posted as we
keep going.
So no, I have not start runningagain, because now I need to
talk with my doc and figure outwhy.
So that now that's that nextquestion.
I really do need to starttraining, here pretty quickly,
so we gotta get on it because I,I did, I signed up for a
(12:46):
marathon in September, September13th.
So we gotta go.
So we'll see what happens.
So there you have it.
Thanks for being here with meand being on this journey with
me.
It has already taught me so muchand we're just getting started.
I think the biggest thing so farfor me that I'm learning in
(13:09):
this, but in also a lot of otherareas of my life, is listening
to my intuition and reallypaying attention to how I feel.
What is my body telling me?
What, what is my gut telling me?
These things are very important.
So thank you again for being onthis journey with me.
(13:31):
I'll keep you posted as we go.
If this resonated with you,please share with someone you
love, and until next time, havea good one.
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