@OneEighth 78616 wrote:
Pain is only weakness leaving the body.
There’s a difference between pain and fatigue. Even hard efforts don’t mean sharp piercing pain. I know what normal fatigue and hard efforts feel like. This time was different. My hip flexors and lower back were irritated and sore for a couple days afterward, even though I took it easy yesterday. Another indicator: my resting heart rate was over 80 bpm. I think my normal resting HR is around 60 bpm or lower. When your resting HR is 20 bpm above normal, something is clearly not right. This was more than 24 hrs. after the workout.
Another sign: I developed serious chills while swimming, just before the spin bike session. The pool is warm. I usually get moderately overheated during long swim workouts. This time I was barely at a comfortable temperature. As soon as I stepped out of the pool, I developed extreme chills and began shivering. That is clearly not normal. That has never happened to me before at that pool, even when the heater was broken a couple months ago. (Back then, I could tell that the water was much colder than usual. But I didn’t get extreme chills when I stepped out.)
At least my hip flexors have finally calmed down. I think they are back to 80-90% of normal. I’ll continue to take it easy this weekend, and not just because of the muscle damage. I think the shivering was caused by inadequate calories during some longer workouts earlier in the week. The calorie deficit caught up to me and hit me with the double-whammy of the exhaustion and muscle pain. Perhaps the two were related. If you have inadequate glycogen stores, the body will try to use muscle tissue for fuel in harder efforts. (Fat is also a fuel, but not so much during higher-intensity efforts.)
Today, my resting HR is back down to 60 bpm, a good sign that I’m recovering from the exhaustion and calorie/glycogen deficit.
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