Hitting a Wall, help

As addressed in the other thread, I think you need to up your carbs (your body's "fuel"!) For endurance training, IMO you should be closer to 50% - 60% healthy carbs.... Give it a try for a week or two and see if you feel any better.

You also might try getting a bit more sleep.  I know that for me, if I don't get 8 hours of sleep per night, I'm toast for most of the day and certainly will hit a wall at about 8pm.  I can get away with less maybe once or twice a week, but much more than that and forget it.

Another thing to consider- do you think there's a possibility that you're over training?  Do you know what your resting heart rate was when you started this? And what it is now?  If it has gone up, maybe it's time to back off the training a little.

Good luck!

It's good to try new macronutrient breakdowns to get a better feel for your body, but you really don't need your diet to be 50% carbs. 

What I would guess is first signs of overtraining... Are you feeling kind of lethargic, or maybe somewhat apathetic?  Is your training progression coming to a halt, or even worse, are you regressing?  Sometimes the best way to train is not to train-- muscles are built in recovery phase, not exertion phase.

Take it easy on your vacation, and see how things go when you come back.  My suggestions are threefold: 

1) make sure you're resting enough.  I don't know your training history, but to generalize, a fairly well trained athlete has a capacity for about five 60 minute moderate to high intensity sessions per week.  Doing any more does more harm than it does good.
2) make sure you're eating enough.  If you've been eating at a caloric deficit in an attempt to lose weight (which you must be, eating that few calories at your size), then switch it up to kick start your metabolism again.  Dieting, or eating at a caloric deficit, slows the metabolism, and eventually you will plateau, which I think is what you are experiencing.  If you're not feeling good after your vacation, eat at a caloric surplus for a few days-- i.e. up your intake to around 3500 calories per day.
3) make sure you're sleeping enough.  6-7 hours a night really isn't very much for an athlete. A lot happens while you sleep: muscular tissue is rebuilt, hormone levels are harmonized, and generally, it is your most optimum time for recovery. I try to get 8-9 hours a night. 

Hopefully this post will get you back on the right track, but if you have any more questions, please feel free to send me a PM. 

More sleep!  Since taking on tri training I have teenager-esque sleeping needs.  I feel like I need 8-9 a night at least.  I was on vacation last week-end and slept an uninterrupted 11 and I haven't done that since college.  You need that sleep time to recover and re-build your body.

honestly, I work just fine on 45% carbs... and you can see from my logs that I am running quite a bit.  The trick is to time your carbs to when you need them (before/during/after workouts - depending on the workout). 

Yeah everybody is different, but I wouldn't think this 4-6% of "missing" carbs is going to make you SO SLUGGISH.  Consider other possibilities before assuming it's diet - sleep or sleep apnea, the heat of summer, vitamin or iron deficiencies.  Oh - also maybe consider that maybe you are operating on too large of an overall calorie deficit.  If your deficit is too large to support your energy needs, then you're going to feel sluggish no matter how many carbs you consume.

ETA: oops I see I just restated what a few other people just wrote.  I just get all sensitive when I see advice for 60% carbs given out as a blanket statement, especially for people not in hard training.  so yeah, what they said!

Edited by DMW 2009-07-19 10:43 PM