Iron-clad your training: the critical mineral runners need to perform at their best

Dietitian and Olympian Kelly Anne Erdman on how to spot the signs, and treat the symptoms, of iron deficiency in endurance athletes The post Iron-clad your training: the critical mineral runners need to perform at their best appeared first on Canadian Running Magazine .

For many athletes, especially in the world of endurance sport, the exhaustion that follows a hard effort is part of the reward for the training it took to make it happen. But when the mountaintop feeling of a new personal best fades away and the fatigue still lingers, it might be a sign of something deeper lurking beneath the surface. What if that fatigue you’re battling during a heavy training block is more than simply the product of hard work?

What if the impacts of an activity-filled lifestyle might actually be contributing to long term health risks? These are the questions that have often gone unheard or overlooked by athletes at all ability levels, but are crucial to making sure that sport remains a healthy part of any athlete’s life. While there’s no simple catchall answer to the above questions, a recurring theme that has drawn the ongoing attention of leading sports scientists, dieticians, and doctors is the impact of low iron levels.

Yet for all iron’s importance to our overall health–and sport performance–it remains largely misunderstood by many athletes. That’s why a group of Canada’s leading sport-science minds have spent the last three years compiling the research for a landmark consensus on the role of iron in sport. This week on The Shakeout Podcast we’re joined be Kelly Anne Erdman, a registered sport dietitian, Olympian, and co-