Over trained or illness? Lingering soreness in quads only

Looking for some help understanding and plotting course of action for soreness in quads muscles in both legs after several weeks attempting to recover from what I initially thought was illness, viral myocitis to be specific. Spoke with a 2 doctors but they admitted they did not have much experience with endurance athletes, one was even flabbergasted that a person my age could ride 300 mile/wk without dying of a heart attack. Really! Had blood labs done on Feb 19 and all metrics such as blood cell count, creatine kinase, ACTH, TSH, testosterone, etc. are in normal range. Cortisol was slightly elevated at 22.5 ug/dL with a range of 6.2-19.4 and this blood was drawn early morning when levels are naturally high.

Situation. Woke up Monday morning Jan 13th with very sore and swollen quads only, like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my 30 yrs of bike racing, I’m 57 now. Felt fine Sunday, the day before, during and after a 85 miles Z2 ride so this very sudden onset of extreme soreness from a moderate ride in my personal experience was very disproportional. I did experience that specific feeling of fatigue like I was getting sick that week of Jan 13th, after soreness onset, but respiratory systems or fever never appeared. Took a few days off and resumed Z2 training the next weekend with relapse of pain and noticed that the swelling was still there, in quads only. Historically, my legs always shrink up a bit with a few days off but not this time, strange. There was lingering inflammation and swelling. Attempted to a number of rest a few days then reintroduce Z2 blocks but the soreness keeps coming back only in quads with occasional brief feelings of fatigue. Swelling has gone down but a feeling of that deep low level soreness persists.

In the past I effectively avoided over training by listing to my body. Days leading up to Jan 13th I did not experience any of the classic signs of over training like micro injuries or lack of motivation to train. Week of Jan 13th was slated as a “rest” week and did feel what I considered a normal amount of training fatigue as I just started to introduce some intensity the two weeks prior.

Thoughts?

This may not apply to you, but just wanted to say that I had pain in my quads that went on for months, it turned out to be to my cholesterol medication, once I switched to a different med the pain went away.

Might not be the case but I’m having all sorts of symptoms because of my low vit D3. In athletes I heard a healthy range is 60 to 90 nmol/l , using it in all sorts of recovery mechanics. Also check your RBC magnesium if you didn’t , that’s the intracellular one not the standard test.

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Only meds I take are over the counter allergy and a low dose of asthma inhaler, once every two or three days. This asthma med dose is well below “recommended” amount and found it’s all I need to control my exercise induced asthma. As for Vit. D and Mg I have a very good diet and get plenty of sunshine (live in California :slight_smile:). I take a high quality multi vitamin, Thorne brand, and my hydration mix has all the necessary electrolytes, including Mg.

Thanks for the ideas, keep them coming!

Looked over my Mg intake and looks a bit low at 30mg per day from supplements only. Most likely get more from diet. RDA is 400-500 mg and athletes up to 800mg. Started Mg citrate 400mg twice a day and will continue for a week then scale back to 300-400mg per day. Hopefully will help.

Yeah. That’s what they say. And somehow that’s true , the average person should get enough vitamins/minerals from a decent diet but most don’t have a decent diet , and that doesn’t account for deficiencies , absorption , genetics etc. And here we talk about performance nutrition , that’s why blood tests never hurt if you are chasing improvement.

Well, it’s only been 18hrs since I started and feeling better already. Decided to spread the Mg citrate supplement out over the day, 2 grams with each meal, dissolved in a glass of water. Will know for sure in a few days if this was Mg deficiency all along if my condition continues to improve at this rapid rate. The numbers in my last post are for elemental equivalent of Mg as each gram if Mg citrate only has 110mg of elemental Mg.

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