Goodbye Gluten

As I’ve mentioned in this blog a few times over the past several months, for whatever reason I’ve spent much of this year struggling with my energy level. There have been points where I thought it was just old age or even all in my head, but regardless, it was hard to deny that I just didn’t feel good. Going back to the start of the year, I ran some pretty solid mileage in January and February along with some decent workouts, and as a result, I was feeling pretty fit coming into March. My first race of the season resulted in a 10k in just over 35 minutes, which wasn’t a bad result considering it was my first race in about 5 months and was on a fairly challenging course too, but honestly I was hoping to go a little faster. The week leading up to that race wasn’t a good one, and I never felt good in the race, even early on.

Initially I blew it off as “just one of those things,” but I felt flat the next week as well. My first suspicion was that I was overtraining, so I backed off my mileage and workouts to see if I would start feeling better. I didn’t. From there, I looked at making some dietary changes, specifically increasing my iron intake since I’ve been diagnosed as anemic in the past and was feeling similar to how I felt when that was the case. I also suspected allergies might be the problem based on the time of year, so I got some allergy medicine to see if that would help.

A couple of weeks of feeling sub-par turned into a month then two, and by May I was really starting to wonder. I had continued to run lower mileage with fewer, less intense workouts, and I was still feeling flat. I even had to bail out of a workout, something I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve done. Plenty enough time had elapsed for the reduced volume to have me feeling better if overtraining was the root cause, and if they were going to help, I felt like enough time had passed for dietary changes and/or allergy medicine to have made a difference as well.

It was at that point that I really started to think about how I was feeling and I realized that, while the last couple of months had been particularly bad, I really hadn’t felt good and had much energy in a long time. I recalled driving to the Heritage Classic 5k the previous Memorial Day and telling my wife, Leslie, that I just had no energy whatsoever and therefore no desire at all to race (all the while yawning my head off and feeling like I just wanted to lie down and take a nap). I also recalled how I almost didn’t race the Charleston Distance Run a few months after that because of how flat I was feeling. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I hadn’t felt good and had been telling people close to me that something felt “off” for a long, long time. I was about to take what would have been for me the super extreme option of going to the doctor to get bloodwork done when I decided to try one last thing.

It was sort of an off-the-wall, shot in the dark idea, but I decided to remove gluten from my diet. Having always had some digestive issues and with many of the symptoms I was feeling being those experienced by people who are gluten sensitive, I figured it was worth a shot. It certainly wouldn’t hurt anything at least, and I learned that a lot of athletes, including professionals like Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, cut out gluten during their competitive seasons simply because a gluten free diet tends to be less inflammatory and promote better muscle recovery.

I knew it wouldn’t be easy, especially for someone who ate as much food with gluten as I did, but fortunately for me my wife was up to the challenge. She has folks in her family who are truly gluten intolerant, so she was familiar with the process of removing gluten from a diet. She is also an excellent cook! The next thing I knew, I was eating gluten free and really not missing anything. I was eating pasta made of rice and corn, gluten free breads and pizza crusts, and even passing on sauces and other things that contain gluten. I noticed a digestive change, for the better, immediately. That in and of itself was intriguing, but not really what I was after. However, after a week or more, I started to notice more the sort of change I was seeking. It’s hard to describe specifically, but I just felt better, with having more energy being a significant part of that.

So, I am now gluten free with no plans to go back as long as it seems to be working. While I don’t think I’m really gluten sensitive and certainly not gluten intolerant, I’m not sure what else to attribute feeling better to. If it’s all in my head, that’s ok, because it’s working and the results are all I’m interested in. I’ve run 116 miles the past 10 days, included my fastest 5k in quite a while, and I’m not as tired as I was when running 50-60 miles per week. I’m not having the digestive issues after workouts and races that I’ve had really ever since I started running, and again, I don’t know what else to attribute that change to. It’s not something I would recommend to everyone and certainly it requires a lot of effort and limits your meal options, especially for eating out, but it seems to have worked for me. Here’s hoping I may have finally hit on something that will allow me to get the most of what my body has left to offer from a running standpoint and something that will improve my overall quality of life as well.