Sometimes after our workouts I feel completely wiped. (I refer to this as "blowing a gasket"). It's all I can do to drag myself to the car and drive home, which is luckily not very far. Usually it's a sprint workout that will do it. Let's just say that it makes it hard to get work done the rest of the day... Does this happen to anyone else? Any suggestions, other than "don't swim as hard," which seems to be defeat the reason why I am there in the first place? (It doesn't seem to me that I am swimming harder than anyone else).
Not to overly gum up the analysis here, but I would be careful with the diagnosis of anemia, particularly if you are aerobically fit. There is a phenomenon called sports anemia that results from increased blood plasma volume, making it look like your hemoglobin, red blood cell count, etc. is low when, in point of fact, it's really not--these are just being diluted by a beneficial increase in blood plasma. (Average person has something like 4 liters of blood; Lance Armstrong has 8.)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../1521949
As far as low oxygen during sprints, they don't call this anaerobic for nothing: you don't really burn much oxygen during all out, short sprints since your muscles are being fueled by anaerobic respiration. (That's why coaches tend to recommend taking few, if any, breaths on a 50--by the time the air gets to your muscles, you're pretty much finished with the race.)
Having gone through no shortage of quasi-hypochondriacal amateur self-diagnosis over the years, for everything to somnolence (tsetse flies nesting in my pillow?) to groin lesion analysis (sexual leprosy?), I have come to believe in the old chestnut about horses and zebras.
To wit, if you hear hoof beats, think the former, not the latter.
You guys are occasionally plagued by an overwhelming desire to take a nap. This tends to happen more frequently after a sprint practice. The precipitating factor (sprint practice) may be important, or it may be a red herring, but the bottom line is that you are sleepy.
Which, hoof beats suggest, means you probably did not get adequate sleep. What caused this inadequacy remains to be seen--voluntary restriction of sleep hours (stayed up late watching The Colbert Report before getting up for a 5 a.m. practice?), restless legs, sleep apnea, medication side effect, snoring husband, something!
I would start with the most obvious cause for sleepiness--not enough quality sleep--and only after you've ruled this out, move on to esoteric explanations like Kreb's Cycle anomalies on circadian rhythms in the presence of albuterol and Synthroid!
Or whatever else my fellow travelers in the land of real illness hyped up by hypochondriacal overtones of excessive auto-analysis and symptom amplification of the sort we hypos know so intimately!
Not to overly gum up the analysis here, but I would be careful with the diagnosis of anemia, particularly if you are aerobically fit. There is a phenomenon called sports anemia that results from increased blood plasma volume, making it look like your hemoglobin, red blood cell count, etc. is low when, in point of fact, it's really not--these are just being diluted by a beneficial increase in blood plasma. (Average person has something like 4 liters of blood; Lance Armstrong has 8.)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../1521949
As far as low oxygen during sprints, they don't call this anaerobic for nothing: you don't really burn much oxygen during all out, short sprints since your muscles are being fueled by anaerobic respiration. (That's why coaches tend to recommend taking few, if any, breaths on a 50--by the time the air gets to your muscles, you're pretty much finished with the race.)
Having gone through no shortage of quasi-hypochondriacal amateur self-diagnosis over the years, for everything to somnolence (tsetse flies nesting in my pillow?) to groin lesion analysis (sexual leprosy?), I have come to believe in the old chestnut about horses and zebras.
To wit, if you hear hoof beats, think the former, not the latter.
You guys are occasionally plagued by an overwhelming desire to take a nap. This tends to happen more frequently after a sprint practice. The precipitating factor (sprint practice) may be important, or it may be a red herring, but the bottom line is that you are sleepy.
Which, hoof beats suggest, means you probably did not get adequate sleep. What caused this inadequacy remains to be seen--voluntary restriction of sleep hours (stayed up late watching The Colbert Report before getting up for a 5 a.m. practice?), restless legs, sleep apnea, medication side effect, snoring husband, something!
I would start with the most obvious cause for sleepiness--not enough quality sleep--and only after you've ruled this out, move on to esoteric explanations like Kreb's Cycle anomalies on circadian rhythms in the presence of albuterol and Synthroid!
Or whatever else my fellow travelers in the land of real illness hyped up by hypochondriacal overtones of excessive auto-analysis and symptom amplification of the sort we hypos know so intimately!
