Hello there,
I am a 36 year old woman. I started training at the gym doing mainly cardiovascular work 4 years ago. I always loved sport, but had been quite inactive for a while. I gradually increased my workload up to 5-6 days a week, working out for an average of 1 hour every day at my cardio heart rate. sometimes I was very tired and stayed home to rest. Last year I took on a very demanding course at university. although I really loved the course I felt I was more under pressure and I gradually decreased my workload to 4 times a week. but the same year my mother passed away and my long term relationship with my partner broke down. so well..it wasn't a good year! during last summer (2008) I was diagnosed with ovarian cysts, which gave me hemorrhage. I felt totally weak for several weeks and could not even walk fast, let alone go to the gym! I thought it was anemia, but in fact some tests some weeks later showed I might have had mononucleosis (maybe before the ovarian cysts...I don't know! I didn't realize about it), so the doctor thought the fatigue was due to that. I gradually restarted going to the gym, and my performance did improve a little bit, I mean, at least I could do a light workout. but it's now a year and I still feel fatigued and my performance has never got back to how it was before. I feel so down as I loved being all up and energetic. I could run at 12 km per hour on the treadmill and never feel tired. I was very very fit. now I can run at 11 km per hour for the same heart rate, sometimes even 10.5 km per hour or I get immediately short of breath. sometimes after 30 min workout I feel so tired I have to stop. If I do a long workout of an hour and half sometimes I have to stop for the following 4 days! I have severe sleep disturbances...a terrible insomnia or I wake up all the time. I have done blood tests and everything but there is nothing that could explain these symptoms. So what happened last year made me depressed and now I cannot even train and i feel even more depressed because I am tired all the time. is this overtraining? but what can I do? I have rested for a whole week and still it didn't go away! also my appetite hasn't decreased at all and I am getting concerned that I probably put on 1-2 kg since I am not training as before. it's not a big problem, but this moment everything seems to make me feel more irritable.
please help :-(
Val