SHUTTING IT DOWN

After my post about feeling like crap and soliciting advice from Katie at Runs for Cookies, I am pretty certain I have classic symptoms of overtraining. For months I had a suspicion this was the case, I was thinking "I should just take a whole week off" since the beginning of December but I just didn't want to "fall behind." Secretly I was just hoping it would resolve itself or I'd figure out I needed to eat an orange after running and all would be well or something.

I even backed off a little on my training, skipped a couple runs, ran a couple runs short (12 instead of 16 at Coach Jim one week) but even then I was still feeling worn down. Basically, what it comes down to is I need to completely stop running for a period of time and allow my body to heal. It doesn't matter if I'm running slow or running a shorter long run, I am still running and my body is still struggling to recover. I never really took a break after the Portland Marathon and after three continuous marathon training cycles without much of a break my body just had enough I guess.

Anyways, I started to research it a little bit and sure as shit, the symptoms of overtraining pretty much line up with the way I feel. I found this article on World Running to be very spot on. A couple of the things don't apply, like feeling like I don't want to eat or my sleep being disrupted (LOL.... I could easily eat 5000 calories a day and sleep 11 hours a night without trying)... but many of the others are spot on. This article, coupled with a few others, pretty much convinced me this was the source of my frustration.

The solution? I am not running again until March 2nd. That will be two whole weeks off and still give me almost two weeks to get a few runs in to be prepared for Shamrock. I shouldn't lose too much fitness in just two weeks. I'll run Shamrock (maybe a PR is out the window, maybe I come back refreshed and have a chance, I don't know and I won't worry about it) and see how I feel. If after Shamrock I still feel like I haven't fully recovered, I'll shut it down again. At that point I won't have enough time to properly elevate my miles to train for the Eugene Marathon, so I'd likely just do the Eugene Half and save my marathon effort for the fall.

Anyways, that's the plan! I am kind of excited! I was starting to really hate running and dreading my runs due to the way my body was feeling. Not only do I get to not run, when I come back hopefully I'll feel refreshed and start to remember that it wasn't always so terrible. Six mile runs should not leave me feeling like crap. That, coupled with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time on March 8th, should lead to a much more positive mindset.

Onward and upward!