Two Blood Markers That Were Elevated After Ironman Roth

Why I tested in the first place

I had a routine blood panel done a few weeks after Ironman Roth — partly curiosity, partly recovery housekeeping. A full distance race is a heavy systemic load, and I wanted a clean read on where my baseline markers were sitting once the immediate post-race noise had cleared.

This is not a medical post — it is a record of what came back on my panel and how I made sense of it before sitting down with my GP. Two values flagged as elevated.

B12 came back elevated

The first flag was vitamin B12. My number sat above the standard reference range — I will drop in the exact value once I have the printout in front of me again.

What I have read since: elevated serum B12 is not uncommon in trained endurance athletes, particularly anyone supplementing or eating a lot of red meat, eggs, dairy or fortified foods. It is also flagged in clinical conditions unrelated to diet, which is why a high reading is worth a GP conversation rather than a shrug. General lab reference ranges put the upper end of "normal" around 900 pg/mL, but the cut-off varies by lab — quote your own panel's range, not mine.

My plan is to recheck on the next panel and see whether it normalises once supplementation and training load settle.

Bilirubin elevated — confirmed as Gilbert syndrome

The second flag was bilirubin. Follow-up testing confirmed Gilbert syndrome — a benign, inherited condition where the liver processes bilirubin a little more slowly than usual. It affects roughly 3-7% of the population, often goes undetected for decades, and is typically picked up by accident on routine bloods.

People with Gilbert syndrome can run elevated unconjugated bilirubin, especially during fasting, illness, stress, or after heavy physical exertion — almost certainly why mine showed up on a post-Ironman panel rather than a quieter one. Occasional mild jaundice is possible during those triggers. There is no performance impact, no treatment, and no dietary restriction.

Honestly, the most useful part was the peace of mind. An "elevated bilirubin" line on a lab report sounds alarming; knowing it is Gilbert syndrome rather than something liver-related is meaningful context to have on file before any future panel.

Not medical advice — and this post will be updated

I am not a clinician. This is a personal account, not guidance. If your own bloods come back outside the reference range, the right next step is a conversation with your GP, not a triathlon blog.

This post is intentionally short. I have not yet transcribed the exact figures from my panel — the actual B12 reading, the bilirubin value, the lab's reference ranges, and the date of the test. Once I have those in front of me I will update the post with the real numbers in place of the general framing above. That is the standard for first-hand posts on this site: actual values or no values, never invented ones.