Le Slump

I am aware of the fact that I haven’t posted in a while.  The truth is that I have nothing great to write about.  I now realize that I’ve overdone it and am in a bit of an over-training slump.  How did this happen???  I’ve been able to handle this volume and intensity before.  The answer, I now realize reluctantly, is that I am under-recovering.

I need to do a bit less of this:

And a bit more of this:

(yes, he’s mine – and he never feels guilty about sleeping in)

This is a difficult concept to fully embrace when you want results and you’re motivated to work hard.  I realize that I should have planned way more of a recovery block after my marathon in March and my attempted double-peak with the 30K two weeks later.  Instead I just kept pushing and trying to build on my fitness.  What manifested was weeks of so-so training with some days of great runs or workouts which would fool me into believing I was recovered with many days of fatigue and lack-luster workouts in between.  Oh hindsight!

Here is a sample of some of the pages in my training log from the past month:

… you get the idea – there is a definite trend here.

I am obviously not to be trusted to be in charge of my own training schedule.  Oh, I know completely the concept of rest and recovery, and always build it in to training plans I write for others.  I, however, have not been working on a training cycle, rather the concept that I should run as hard and for as long as I can whenever I have the opportunity because my opportunities are so rare.  Clearly this plan is not working.

My planned solution is to hire a coach who can oversee my training cycles and phases.  One thing I do know about myself is that I’m very coach-able.  If it’s written down I tend to do it.    This is what was discouraging me from adhering to a formal plan, as I get very stressed if I can’t fit in something that has been planned.  Running whenever it suits me works for me psychologically, but maybe not as well physically.  So here we go … let’s hope for a more successful fall of racing!