Week 12 Marathon Training Thoughts
Nobody corrected me last week so I’m going with this symbol theme!
Well this week has been one of those up and down weeks! I had a good start to the week, with the furthest run I’ve managed last Sunday that made me feel positive and happy. Then, on Thursday I had a bit of a disaster training session which resulted in me being in floods of tears with things feeling like they were just too much. Read on to find out why, as well as my other thoughts for the week…
Sometimes you just need to give yourself a break
In week 3, I talked about how you can use your life stressors to help you through hard sessions and that by telling yourself you got through X in life, you can get through this session. I still stand by this, but sometimes, life can be extra tough, and as a result training might not go to plan and it might not be within your mental capacity to handle it, which is what happened to me on Thursday.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to talk about this in my blogs, because it is very personal, but if I’m being honest about my training and my week, it would be hard to explain without a fuller picture. Without going into all the details, basically, my Dad is very poorly. We’ve known for a while, but the past couple of weeks have been tough and a rollercoaster of worry, stress and hospital visits. I have been trying to get through it and cope as best as I can and continue with everyday life as normal, but clearly the stress and anxiety was building up. I got to the gym on Thursday with a plan of doing an hour of 6 min C2 bike, 400m run. This was going to be the longest interval of running I’d done recently and when I planned it during the week I was looking forward to giving it a go. However, my brain and body had other ideas. I ended up crying on the bike after a few minutes, as I was very wobbly. I tried to calm myself down and then I went out on a run and the combination of my emotions, the cold air and breathing heavily led me to very nearly have a panic attack. I got back to the gym, and I was really struggling to breathe, and I felt very overwhelmed with all sorts of worries and thoughts running through my brain. I managed to try and calm my breathing down a little bit but I was in floods of tears and by this point I was so far into breaking down I knew I wasn’t really going to be able to come back from it and have a good session. Thankfully my best friend was at the gym, and she talked to me and told me to change my running to the next day, and to just sit on the bike for a bit instead and pedal at a lower intensity. I was very torn because I wanted to train because I knew the endorphins would help and I wanted the headspace effect from it. But I also knew that any level of intensity was not going to help that day, and she knew it too. So, once I had stopped crying, I got back on the bike and just moved my legs for the rest of the hour. I reduced the resistance on the bike and I just moved. I managed to get about 13km of bike done at least but, in all honesty, I felt totally exhausted. So sometimes, it’s about being a bit kinder to ourselves. Understanding that life can be hard at times, and in those times, we need to go easier on ourselves and not expect too much of our bodies or minds. Either way – stress will come out, and if, like me it comes out mid training session and ruins the plan a bit, this doesn’t make me weak for not being mentally strong, it makes me human. I had a human day and that’s ok. I also think that although it’s not nice crying, it was a good thing that my training brought it out of me, as I obviously needed to release it. So there is a positive in there too.
The next day I managed to do my 400m run intervals interspersed with 2 mins on the bike. My heart rate was a lot higher than normal, likely suggestive of high cortisol levels (the stress hormone) in my body and this reinforced that what had happened the day before was understandable and necessary.
Training adaptation - why your training might feel rubbish and why this is a good thing!
Adaptation refers to a stage in your training where your body is adapting to the increased load you are putting it through. It is a period where your body is making adaptations to cope with the increasing volume, and although this sounds positive, the adaptation phase does not feel good! It can make people question whether they are making progress, worry they’re not doing well enough, feel like they’re going backwards, and find things harder mentally. When you push through adaptation you are making your body stronger and more able to handle longer runs, but the results don’t show until after adaptation. This is what deload weeks are for… and taper before the big event! These weeks help your body to recover from all the adaptations, and then you start the next phase of your cycle stronger and fitter, to go through it all over again, or you do your event!
I have been explaining this to one of my running clients this week, because they found one of their long runs really hard and felt like they had done a rubbish session. I argued the opposite, that despite the fact they found it really hard, they still got it done, and there are both mental and physical gains from doing so with mental resilience, cardiovascular and muscular development!
Adaptation can involve feeling very tired, sore, having slower training sessions and feeling fed up and unmotivated. Understandably this is going to make training harder to get through. Ways to help are proper fuelling – so making sure you are eating enough and getting the right nutrition in on longer runs. Sleeping and recovery are very important although I know that life can sometimes get in the way of that. However, just understanding that it is normal to experience this when training for something as big as a marathon can help to process the difficulties of this phase.
A word of warning though – you do need deload weeks. If you constantly push through always increasing your training and thinking more is better, this will send you into maladaptation – your body won’t get stronger and it won’t adapt because it will be too fatigued to do so. So appropriate rest is necessary.
Seeing a friendly face helps with training!
Last weekend, my friend who is also doing Rome marathon had a long run and she ran from her house to my house. I did my short interval training and timed it perfectly to meet her as she finished! It was nice knowing we were both out running at the same time (even if mine was majorly shorter than hers!) and then we did our cool down walk together and discussed our runs! Maybe you have a friend to do this with too? It can help knowing you’re going to see a friendly face at the end!
I hope you have a good week of training, and I hope I have more positive sessions this week and no major breakdowns! But I guess if I do, it’s ok, I’m allowed…