My daughter is a HS cross country runner (Sr). She is on the tall and lean side. She has been training all summer 35 - 50 miles a week. She is now into her season. When she is racing she says that her legs feel heavy and she can not turn them over. She feels like her body is sore all over. She does have slight case of asthma and uses a nebulizer.
I tried having her drink more fluids a couple of days out from her race make sure she is not get dehydrated. She is icing down after workouts and get rub downs from her trainer.
She is getting more frustrated after each race. We would look forward to your suggestions.
It sounds like you are doing everything right. Your daughter is probably in the middle of her season where the training is the most intense. Pretty much everyones legs are tired and sore at this point. She has been running consistently for a long period of time, and it is very normal to feel fatigued now.
In the next couple of weeks, your daughter's coach will probably start cutting back on the amount of running, and also make the workouts easier on her. This should make her legs feel much better, and all that hard work she has put in will start paying off.
Another idea that I recommend is take a hot bath at the end of the night. This is something I would do and it seemed to really loosen up my legs before I went to sleep. The next day I would feel much more flexible and my turn over would be much better. She should try this a few times before a race to see how her legs respond to it. If it works, do this the night before a race.
Stay positive. She'll break through with a good race soon!
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