I had an epiphany last night. 

I came home from my run feeling really dejected.  I was slow, and yet my HR was relatively high.  It wasn’t a one-off either – my runs of late have mostly felt that way.  My swims have been getting crappier and crappier too.  Around a month ago, I clocked a new 100m PB of 1.41 minutes.  This week, apart from one that got past the keeper at 1.42 minutes, I had a couple in my set that were in the early 1.50s.   I’d been going great guns with my swimming, having tweaked my technique slightly.  Now I’m getting slower again, am left feeling knackered, and yet I’m not doing anything differently.

So that’s the swimming and the running.  Cycling is going okay I suppose, but it’s certainly a long, long way from being a strength.  Ashburton is looking more and more likely to be a real plod at this stage.

But back to my epiphany.  It dawned on me last night that since Wanaka, I have not taken one iron tablet, or any Spirulina, or any of the other supplements I used to down routinely.  I’ve been thinking I should get back on the rails and start again, but it has never happened.  Okay, I’m not going to be nearly as candid as Gina Crawford, but before Wanaka, I was on the Pill constantly.  I mean constantly.  No sugar pills for me, just one lot after the other.  Get it?    I’d always had big issues with anaemia so rightly or wrongly, for the past couple of years, I didn’t want it affecting my training so fiddle with the hormones I did.

I put all that behind me after Wanaka, allowed myself to go au naturale, fell out of the habit of taking supplements, and now I think the darn anaemia is hitting me again.  I’m tempted to get the bloods done, but then if things are normal, what will I put my current ’state’ down to?  And if I am anaemic, I’ll panic that I only have six weeks left until Ashburton to get my ferritin levels back up.

Having done a quick analysis of my diet using an online diet tool thingy, my average daily intake of iron is 4.8mg.  Hmmm, apparently it’s supposed to be around 18mg.  Plus being physically active takes its toll on ferritin/iron stores.

So last night I dug out what spirulina I had, knocked back some zinc, and I’ll be off to the chemist this afternoon for some of my favourite Carbonyl tablets.   How quickly they’ll work, I’m not sure.  And if it has a placebo effect, then so be it.  I don’t think I have much to lose.