After a spectacular, amazing and exhausting June, running San Diego 100, pacing Jon at Western States and having a crazy work schedule between both events (I pulled 4 all-nighters the week of Western States) I found myself fatigued, tight and sore - totally worn out and this despite taking a whole week off of running after pacing Jon. The beginning of July I was exhausted all the time despite 8 hours of sleep every night. Tired before bed, tired getting up, tired during the day. Every time I went out for a run I was fatigued and my body, especially my legs were tight and sore. I figured I was over trained and took it easy the next two weeks. When that didn't help I took the rest of the month off. Just to be sure I went in to see my doctor and the blood test showed nothing out of the ordinary. I was worried my thyroid was out of whack or that I had anemia again. Nope none of that which is good.
I started running again the first week of August, ughh it was painful. It was like my body was a tightly clenched fist and it took most of the month to slowly ease and stretch my body back into running. I had knots and pain in places I hadn't even known until I started running again. I also um… put on some weight. Heck I didn't care, I indulged and since it's the summer which is my biggest season for beer drinking… well you get the picture. I'm still not 100% but moving in that direction. After a month my runs still don't feel as fluid as they used to and I have only just started doing long runs in the double digits. So far so good though. Being over trained is not cool, kind of makes me wish there was a drug that could cut the recovery time.
Now I'm just thankful I can run consistently again and to have the DESIRE to run. At it's worst I lost my passion for running, I preferred to sit around and do nothing and was totally fine with it…no actually I preferred it rather than being out suffering through another bad workout.
Moving forward, I'm a member of Strava and they have a new contest, 100 miles in 16 days. Ultrarunners and high mileage runners will have no problem with this but like their elevation challenge, 10,000 feet of climb in a month, I'm curious to see who has the most miles at the end of 16 days. I'm psyched for it and will use the contest to further jump start my training. I've had a month of "easing" back into things, now is a good time to start going long again. This weekend I had two decent runs, today's run better than yesterday but both in the double digits. While todays run, at 15.5 miles, is shorter than yesterday's, I enjoyed every mile of it.
Out of the valley back into the mountains.
I know a lot about overtraining, and loosing desire to run...not to mention that "W" thing:) Glad you're tracking back! As for Strava, a few people kept telling me about it, but living in TX, elevation is nearly impossible to gain, unless all you do is go up and down one dingy hill somewhere. Good luck to you being inspired!
ReplyDeleteYeah you definitely would have had a hard time on the elevation challenge a few months back but this time it's all mileage. Phew glad to be back. After a month of grinding it out the runs are fun again, still slow but lots of fun. I just went on a 2 hour late evening run because of work, so nice and perfect way to wind down from the day.
DeleteJust stumbled upon your blog - glad to hear a success story of finding your passion to run again. Those challenges will definitely help get you on track, but like Olga, I wouldn't be able to do the elevation challenger here in Houston - flatest place I have ever lived (and I've lived in Kansas)
ReplyDeleteWelcome Chris. Thanks. When on injury time out, you want to run but can't. When over trained you don't even care. It's like running depression - crazy.
DeleteI couldn't do it, living in a flat place although I enjoyed my visits to London. I've gone twice, a month both times. Although if I did move there or another flat area like Houston or Austin, I may just focus on less hilly ultras.
The fact that this is a late comment is indicative of some things. For one, I share your misery on the "challenge" of going back to running regularly and with ease. Was sedentary too after WS100. Secondly, I have lost (thank God it is only momentarily!) interest reading up about running on blogs, etc.
ReplyDeleteSo it is nice to hear about you going back to what you like doing most. By the way, the shoes ALTRA arrived. Will let you know how they will perform. Did you get a pair too? Cheers!
Welcome back!
ReplyDeleteGotta have the lows to know the highs! I think anyone who has been doing this for a while his found those dark days...but the wheel turns and the light comes back on!