Pfitzinger Pete - Advanced Marathoning

If you’re truly overtrained, you need to take immediate action. The first step is to see a sports physician to check that you don’t have an illness that mimics the symptoms of overtraining. The possibility always exists that excessive fatigue is caused by something worse than running. Also ask the physician to check your hemoglobin and ferritin levels to see whether your iron levels are normal (see chapter 2).

Unless you have a particularly severe case of overtraining, 3 to 5 weeks of greatly reduced training should bring your energy level back to normal. It appears that reducing training intensity is more important than reducing training volume in breaking out of overtraining syndrome. Reducing your training intensity so that you’re doing only easy aerobic running is the most important step in breaking out of overtraining.

You should, however, also reduce your training volume. The correct amount to reduce your training volume depends on your individual circumstances and how deeply entrenched in overtraining you’ve become. As a rule of thumb, reducing your mileage by 50 percent should be enough to allow your body to recover. In addition, if you’ve been training twice a day, it will be necessary to reduce to one training session a day. Your body needs time to recover, and a second workout will slow your progress. For the first several weeks, it’s also helpful to have at least 1 day a week off from training.

Monitoring your body provides valuable information on your adaptation to training, your risk of injury or illness, and your readiness for the next hard training session. There are several good ways to determine when you are overreaching so you can avoid overtraining and remain healthy. You can use this information to improve your recovery by modifying your training schedule.

There are many ways to monitor your recovery, but the simplest measures are often the most useful and the easiest to adhere to. In combination, these measures provide insight into your adaptation to training. Typically, when results on these measures decrease, running performance and recovery deteriorate a few days later. In addition to the details of your training, try recording the following details in your training log, and review your log periodically to find the patterns that predict overtraining, illness, and injury.

• Weight:Check your weight at the same time of day each day or several times per week. Decreases in weight over a few days usually indicate dehydration. Decreases in weight over a few weeks can indicate that you are not eating enough calories, have an illness, or are overtraining.

• Morning heart rate:Your heart rate when you first wake up in the morning provides an indication of your recovery. It is important to check your heart rate soon after you wake, because it increases as soon as you start thinking about your plans for the day and by about 10 beats per minute when you get up. In addition, waking to an alarm can increase your heart rate and make the data less reliable.

• To find your resting heart rate, therefore, take your pulse immediately upon waking for several days. Your true resting heart rate is the lowest rate you find. If your morning heart rate is more than 5 beats per minute higher than usual, this may be an indication of inadequate recovery or illness. An elevated morning heart rate can be particularly useful in preventing illness, as the increased heart rate is often the first sign that you are not well.

• Environmental conditions:Record the temperature and humidity on hot days. Because of increased core body temperature and dehydration, your body undergoes substantially more stress when you run at 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) and 80 percent humidity than at 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) and low humidity. If you train hard or compete on a hot, humid day, the heat you generate can overwhelm your body’s ability to eliminate heat, causing your core temperature to climb, which can greatly increase recovery time. Similarly, as discussed in chapter 2, dehydration also increases recovery time. There’s great variation in how runners are affected by heat. Your training log will reveal patterns that can help you make needed adjustments during a stretch of hot weather.

• Hours of sleep:The number of hours of sleep that you obtain is not particularly important for any one night. Over several nights, however, your quantity of sleep can influence your recovery and ability to adapt positively to training. Your quantity of sleep is one of several measures that, in combination, can explain a lack of recovery and can indicate needed lifestyle changes to help prevent illness or injury.

• Quality of sleep:The quality of your sleep is arguably more important than the number of hours. Evaluate the quality of your sleep each night – How soundly did you sleep? Were you awake a lot in the middle of the night? Did you get out of bed feeling refreshed? – and try to be as consistent as possible in your assessment. A reduction in quality of sleep is often associated with overtraining. Reduced sleep quality can also be caused by nonrunning stressors, but the result for your running performance is the same.

• Diet quality:Evaluate the overall quality of your diet each day – Were each of your meals balanced? Did you get so hungry that you binged? Did the bulk of your calories come from fresh grains, fruits and vegetables and lean sources of protein? – and try to be as consistent as possible in your assessment. Often, a lack of energy can be traced back to poor diet in the previous few days.

• Hydration level:Dehydration has an immediate effect on running performance and slows recovery from training. Evaluate your hydration level each day – Was your urine clear throughout the day? Did you drink small amounts regularly so that you seldom felt thirsty? Did your mouth and throat often feel dry? – and try to be as consistent as possible in your assessment. Your daily weight provides a good indication of your hydration level.

• Muscle soreness:It is not unusual for runners to have slightly sore muscles most of the time. An increase in muscle soreness can be due to a hard workout or running downhill. Evaluate your general muscle soreness each day – Were any of your leg muscles much more sore than others? Did your soreness lessen after a few miles of running? Did your soreness seem explainable by your most recent workouts? – and try to be as consistent as possible in your assessment. If increased general muscle soreness lasts more than 4 or 5 days, then it is likely that you are ill or overreaching. Soreness in a specific muscle indicates a potential injury, whereas more-general muscle soreness provides an indication of your recovery and adaptation to training.

• Energy level:An assessment of energy level is one of the best indications of recovery from training. Evaluate your energy level each day – Did you have the energy to accomplish your running and daily life goals? Did you feel alert and focused when running or performing a task? Were you willing to undertake activities that required effort, or did you dread them? – and try to be as consistent as possible in your assessment. If your energy level is reduced for more than 3 days, it is important to determine the cause of the reduction. Typical causes of reduced energy levels are lack of carbohydrate intake, training hard too many days in a row, illness, low iron levels, dehydration, and lack of sleep. By reviewing your training log and considering your lifestyle factors, you should be able to identify the likely cause of a low energy level.