It all started toward the end of my first college cross country season. I had had a frustrating few months, getting slower and slower until I came in dead last at our final meet. No, not last for the team or in a specific category. Last overall. It was devastating, and I didn’t understand what or why it had happened. In hindsight, that was my first warning.

As all good runners do, I pushed on through the experience, putting it behind me, determined to make the upcoming track season a good one. After Christmas break, however, things began to go downhill quickly.

I started to get sick more and more frequently, having colds for weeks at a time. I was always exhausted, constantly struggling to stay awake through classes and during my free time. In fact, I napped almost every day, and often went to bed early. It’s a miracle my grades didn’t suffer too significantly. Later in the semester things began to get worse. I was never hungry, and too much of the wrong kind of food made me nauseous. I had frequent headaches, and worst of all, the running just got harder and slower.

The sad part is, all of these issues probably would have gone untreated if not for the running problem. I wrote everything else off as simply being tired from homework, or that being in contact with so many other girls led to being sick so often. I simply just couldn’t figure out why I put in so much effort to my running and got so few results in return. It was one of the most frustrating times of my life. I cannot begin to count the nights I spent in tears, trying to understand what was happening to me.

Finally, months later, I got in to see a doctor. They took blood, and confirmed what I already suspected. I was iron deficient, and severely so. For reference, I was given my ferritin levels. Ferritin is a protein that stores iron, and is frequently used to assess iron levels. A normal amount for a woman is between 15 and 200 nanogram per milliliter. My ferritin level was at 5. It was evident that I was anemic.

A little background: Anemia is one of the more common conditions among humans. Its most common form, iron deficiency anemia (IDA), is caused by lesser than normal amounts of iron in the body, which results in low red blood cell count. With fewer red blood cells, there is significantly less oxygen traveling to the organs, leading to chronic fatigue, headaches, nausea, paleness, eye yellowing, and many other symptoms.

There are multiple causes of IDA, and iron deficiency in general. It is frequent in athletes, especially runners, because the pounding of feet on the ground can break up red blood cells. It is also a common problem for women, because of the loss of blood during menstruation. That itself was two strikes against me. Add a diet not particularly rich in leafy greens and red meat (things rather difficult to come by and regularly eat in a college dining hall), and that was three strikes.

Luckily, this story has a happy ending. Anemia is one of the easiest conditions to reverse, once it has been diagnosed. I was prescribed iron pills to be taken daily, with another blood test in the near future to check progress.

Nearly four weeks later, I am finally, after a long and exhausting year, starting to feel human again. It feels as though a weight has been lifted from my shoulders and I can once again breathe.

The best part of all is that I’m running again. Not only that, but every day I can go farther and faster. Life, finally, is beginning to return to normal, and honestly, I can hardly wait.

Sources: healthline.com, mayoclinic.com