Fatigue

Training has continued, and so has the fatigue.  My current training schedule has me training with the team Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday but to meet my goals I need to be training 6 days a week with one day of active recovery.  I have within the last two weeks hit a bit of a wall, with this training, my body has not been able to recover from workouts fast enough leading to residual fatigue.  Residual fatigue can be anything from your body not recovering glycogen stores to the level before the workout, structural break down and/or lack of Neuro-endocrine recovery.  The fatigue will lead to stress in the three main body functions to perform.    

During exercise, your body has three systems that it uses to create energy, the Phosphogen system, the anaerobic system and the aerobic system.  Muscles need Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the bodies energy compound, to function and after it uses it whats left is Adenosine Diphosphate (ADP).   So for example, you are walking down the hall way and out of nowhere a pterodactyl starts running at you.  Your body goes oh crap, and you start running away from it.  Your body during the first 10 seconds of seeing the pterodactyl will use the Phosphogen system to give you a burst to get away, to most people, this is the fight or flight response.  After those 10 seconds of amazing speed your body will slow down a bit as you start working into the anaerobic system which will help you get even further.  This system is not inexhaustible though, and its really easy to tell that it is the anaerobic system because you will feel the unmistakable burn on the lactic acid byproduct.  Then after you do hit that "burn" your body will work its way into the sustainable aerobic system that will get you away and hopefully to safety. This system works as long as your body can take in enough oxygen to fuel it.  

The hard part about training at a high intensity is the amount of glycogen stores that are burned.  Glycogen is the fuel that is stored in my body as Fat and without that Fat, I have no fuel.  The structural breakdown is from my muscles and bones not fixing the micro tears and breaks that happen from the stress of jumping and pushing and pulling.  Every time you take a step your bone gets lots of tiny cracks that are quickly fixed leading to a stronger bone.  The activities that we do literally shape our bodies and make them stronger, given that they have ample time to repair themselves.  

The fatigue that I have reached is just another step in my training.  It was something that I did not expect and I will need to properly correct for.  Its just another stroke in the row to finish a marathon.