Case 013: Death by Distance — Cumulative Fatigue & Overtraining Syndrome

This case doesn’t break the runner all at once. It wears them down slowly. The pace stops improving. Easy runs begin to feel like work. Recovery stretches from hours into days. The instinct is to push harder, add more, and chase fitness with even greater effort. But sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s a body that has been asked for too much, for too long.

In this episode of The Foot Detective, we open the file on Cumulative Fatigue and Overtraining Syndrome — the quiet collapse that happens when training load keeps rising but recovery cannot keep pace. We follow the clues through relentless mileage, missing rest days, poor sleep, low energy availability, rising resting heart rate, blunted m ...