I HATE overtraining.

It’s too vague, too subjective, too nebulous. It’s a waiting game with an uncertain amount of waiting time. I should have raced in Ironman Arizona alongside the cacti on Sunday, but instead I’m sitting on the sideline.

What I struggle with - and what I imagine many other athletes struggle with as well - is that overtraining is not a tangible, physical body part that is broken, cut or bruised. A broken bone or a wound will heal in a doctor prescribed amount of time, but how do you know when you are “healed” of overtraining?

The collective wisdom for curing overtraining is “chill for a while.”

What does “chill” mean? Do nothing? Easy, short workouts? What about easy, long workouts?

How long is “a while?” Is it a few days, a week, a few weeks, a month or longer?

The answer to all of the these questions is, “It depends.”

This uncertainty is what I HATE the most about overtraining.

I’ve been struggling with what I believe is overtraining the past few weeks and possibly extending back through the winter to the fall after I had raced 3 Ironman races and race directed 6 races in a span of three months. Even though my exercise stress level was “normal” for me through the summer and consistent with past years of Ironman training, it was the other stresses in my life that took me out of a state of positive eustress and tipped me into a state of overtraining. In hindsight, I never took true “downtime” to recover from the sleepless nights / high anxiety of being a race director and the long training hours of being an Ironman triathlete. Instead, I signed up for an early season marathon in February, which I finished the marathon 30 minutes slower than my goal time, then for Ironman Arizona two months later.

Symptoms commonly attributed to overtraining include: fatigue, muscle soreness, difficulty sleeping at night, anxiety, depression, malaise, bad moods, sickness and a few other nasty little phrases. I experienced a few of these symptoms over the winter and every single one of these symptoms in the past three weeks.

I still believe that I will “bounce back” one day, but I realize now that “one day” may be in a few weeks or even a month.

Now that I’m here, I HATE it. Not knowing when I will bounce back creates anxiety for me. Will I be able to race next month? Will I be able to race in 2 months? I don’t know.

Prolonged overtraining can lead to sickness and injury so I will “chill for a while”…however long that may be.

Train smartly,

David

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David B. Glover
Writer, Athlete, Coach and Race Director
Author of Full Time and Sub-Nine
Personal Web: www.davidglover.net
Business Web: www.enduranceworks.net

©2008 David B. Glover