21 year old son is a very competitive and talented distance athlete running on college team. This cross country season however has been horrible - in spite of excellent training and great work outs he is struggling in races. After about 1-2 miles into the race his body seems to shut down - legs heavy, body aches, etc. He finishes but at more of a jog than run. This has happened at every single race this fall. Again, workouts have been great so fitness has been tested and coaches think he is fitter than ever but for some reason when he gets at race pace for more than 1.5 miles his body just hits kind of a wall. We have had blood work done and all seems ok - platelets a little low but dr said not low enough to worry. His iron and ferritin have been checked and are within normal ranges. He has taken an iron supplement for years. We have taking him to a sports psychologist as his dr said maybe it is race anxiety - son says no way it's race anxiety and psychologist agreed. We've also been ver conscious about carbs and calories to boost glucose and glycogen - has not made a difference. The only thing that might be a little different from years past is that This past summer he trained at altitude in Kenya for 5 weeks. Toward the end of his time there he came down with something - had chills and was in bed for 24
Hours but according to people with him he never developed a fever. They said that they were watching him for that as it would have been an indicator of malaria. Within a couple of days he was back to running. We don't know if this travel and/or illness has any bearing but we are perplexed and looking at everything. Drs don't seem to know what to do next - we have a referral to an endocrinologist but not sure that's the right direction. Someone suggested a possible hidden virus... It may sound like this is about racing performance but it seems to manifest itself in that setting and we are concerned that if there is more going on that he could be doing further harm by continuing to run/train at his high levels. anyone have any suggestions or experience with this type of thing? We are feeling desperate.