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Of course part of the reason I was never able to attack injury prevention with as much gusto as I would have liked in my younger years (especially 20s) has (like so many other things in life) to do with time and money. Not that I'm rolling in the dollah dollah bills now or anything, but one of the perks of getting older and further along in my career has meant that I do have more flexibility and control over my time than I used to, and a bit more expendable income. Even so, just a few years ago, I still did a lot of skimping around stuff like strength and body work and was constantly asking myself, "Geez, this stuff isn't cheap, is it really worth it?"
And the conclusion I came to at age 40 (knowing that I have enough expendable income now to do it without being irresponsible) is "HELL YES, it's worth it." Because it's not just about being able to run the way I want to; it's also about just generally taking care of my various bones and muscles and joints so that I can be that old lady toodling happily around the track and living happily and independently well into my golden years.
This year's theme, I think, is shaping up to be recovery.
Back in December I mentioned a day in the gym (the 20th, if I rightly recall) where, although I didn't feel any more tired than usual, I couldn't even come close to doing things I'd done just a week or two ago, the low point of a downward trend that had been going on for a couple of weeks. My pull-ups had gone from ten to eight to five; I'd gone from being able to do several reverse lunges with a solid 100+ pounds to barely being able to do them with just bodyweight; and whereas I'd been warming up with 180 lbs deadlifting, we had to take the weight all the way down to 115 lbs to be manageable.My strength coach described this as the most precipitous dropoff he'd ever seen in anyone. At first I'd been like, "Oh, yeah, well, I ran that hard 4.5 miles Sunday which I was absolutely NOT fit to do," and then he was like, "Uhh well yeah but also you can barely do a pull-up." True. That was when he reminded me of the central nervous system fatigue that can happen when you really overdo things--that is, it's not just that certain muscles are a bit damaged and tired so they aren't able to perform as well (peripheral nervous system fatigue). It's that your actual brain literally isn't sending enough electrical signal to your muscles to fully activate them.
While I don't think it's 100% fully understood yet, it's likely partly due to your body trying to protect its fried or compromised parts from suffering significant damage until it's had time to recover a bit from whatever's going on. This protection might be necessary for a lot of reasons, such as poor nutrition, lack of sleep, injury, illness, or, more relevant to this discussion, overtraining.
(Just a side note -- There is a big difference between a few weeks of acute overtraining and the (potentially permanent, career-ending) condition known as overtraining syndrome we sometimes hear about with pro athletes, but ignoring signs of the first thing for months or years on end is definitely how you get to the second thing.)
At first I was like, "My dude. I haven't run over 27 miles/week in MONTHS. Most of the time it's been closer to 15-20. Or zero. And nearly all of that has been easy. There is *no way* that constitutes overtraining."
And then he was like, "Riiiight, except for those two races you fully admit you were not trained for, and the couple of speed workouts you kind of shoehorned in to kinda-sorta feel slightly more prepared, and jumping from 10 miles a week to 20 to 27, and--"
Me, annoyed: "OKAY OKAY OKAY FINE! Mistakes were made."
Because the thing is, overtraining just means "working too hard," specifically, "working too hard relative to your current fitness." There's no one special number where beyond that lies overtraining; it's all relative to what your body is physiologically prepared to take on and benefit from right now, aka, how recovered you are.
By the time you reach noticeable CNS fatigue, I've learned, it means you've been in a chronic state of not recovering for a while, and the quickest way to fix it is just to shut things down completely for a bit, get lots of sleep and lazy rest, eat and hydrate sufficiently, and avoid anything that stresses out your mind or body (including, for example, alcohol) as much as possible.
In the short term, fixing this kind of "nonfunctional overreaching" isn't a big deal (it literally just requires doing nothing for a while); but it is annoying, because while doing nothing for a while will help you get back to baseline (and avoid making things worse), it is definitely not helping you get fitter and faster (except insofar as "baseline" is an unavoidable stop on the way to "fitter and faster").
The best thing, then, is to avoid ending up in the overtraining place to to start with, which has two components:
1) Avoid regularly putting more strain on your body than it can recover and benefit from;
2) Make sure you're adequately recovering from whatever strain you do put it through.
So in 2023, I'm trying to be all about balancing the two--doing an appropriate amount of training for where I am currently, and also doing everything in my power (welllll okay let's say 95% of the things in my power) to recover fully and be ready for the next hard effort.
Grand Total: 27 miles, basically all easy
Monday 1/2: Rest. My New Year's Day run was supposed to be an easy 10, but I felt like absolute TRASH and after just one mile was trying to figure out just how far I thought I could make it. I settled on turning around at two miles (for a total of four) but was very happy to have Monday off. (I'm going to blame the bad run on staying up super late on NYE & drinking more than normal 😅.)
Tuesday 1/3: 6 easy + 1 hour strength. Still recovering from the stress of the holidays, but starting to feel a bit more like myself.
Wednesday 1/4: 6 easy Rest. I was so, so tired Wednesday afternoon and I don't know if you've heard but we've had some absolute BONKERS rainstorms around here and it was dark and pouring rain by the time I was done with work. At one point I said "Let me just close my eyes for a minute and see if I can get up the motivation to go get some running done in this" and apparently fell asleep on the couch. for like an hour. So no running.
Thursday 1/5: 6 easy. Gettin' it done the next day instead! Things still feeling harder than normal, but not undoable.
Friday 1/6: 5 easy. Still pretty tired but able to finish five easy miles.
Saturday 1/7: Rest. Given how challenging 5-6 easy miles had been this week and how I'd had to abort last Sunday's 10 miles in favor of some of the four hardest "easy" miles I'd run in a while, I was starting to get a bit nervous about attempting another 10 on Sunday, so on Saturday I decided to put into practice some of what I'd been learning about "aggressive recovery" in order to be ready for Sunday's 10.
Sunday 1/8: 10 mostly easy, with 8 x 0:30 hill sprints. And, success! I felt great in this run from the very beginning and all the way through, even with the hill sprints. Significantly easier than any of the shorter runs earlier in the week! Aggressive recovery, it works! 🙌
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