Going hard......enough

There's always the trouble be it in training or racing that you go too hard, and that only serves to screw you over.  I went through this myself last night trying to KOM on a hill on the first go and didn't fully recover for the next 4 repeats or so.  So when you're training how hard do you go to get a lot better but not go too deep to compromise your training down the road? 

The worse thing with endurance sports like this is it's not always apparent that you've screwed yourself over, I mean sometimes it is like during intervals.  But what about if you're planning for a race and you realize that you never did fully recover from an over done workout, or in a shorter time scale you might not notice till a few days later after a rest day and you realize you can't run.  At the end of the day no matter how good you did one workout, missing one or two workouts on the backend after a difficult workout does more harm than good. 

So the big thing is a lot of us go too hard on the easy days and too easy on the hard days.  Either that or you just run into a general run of mediocrity for training intensity.  So what you can do for this is you train to race, pick a goal pace and then stick to training at slightly below that pace unless it's a race pace day or an interval day.  If you feel like you're dead like you would at the end of race at the end of a training session, chances are you've pushed too hard.

We've all run intervals and if you've done them alright they should all be around the same time.  If you noticed that you're sliding down in times you're probably starting off a little bit too fast.  Either that or you need to give a little bit more recovery time in between.  But it's better to run a little bit slower with less recovery because that will slowly build your body's ability to operate at a higher intensity with quicker recovery times.

Part two of running intervals is that you should never end with the feeling that you're absolutely gassed.  Just like part 1 said you should never push to the point where you feel like the end of the race.  Finish with the feeling that you have another interval left and it'll be good.

The last point which also kinda coincides with the point above is that you're better off doing a little bit too less than doing a little bit too much.  The reason is because your body's ability to recover from multiple trips into the redline area, is limited.  You will peak super quickly, but then you'll just burn out.  At which point burning out results in one just having to rest and rest and rest some more.

So what happens if you screwed up, and now you need to recover?  Well cut down on your weekly mileage, run a little bit slower (20-30 seconds) so that your body can build back a little bit of endurance.  Sleep lots so your body can undo the damage, and just kinda role back the clock on your training plan.  But most of all you need to listen to your body, and be honest with yourself.  If you're still not feeling the love, take a break and get back a week later.

~Cheers