Stupid Vicious Cycles (Read 498 times)

No...this isn't a thread about bicycling... Does anyone else find that life difficulties = poor run quality = frustration/stress = poor run quality ∞ ? This month has been positively wretched for me. The first weekend of Nov. we traveled 8+ hours each way to spend time with my FIL as he fought his last days with cancer. On the 8th he passed-away and we again made the trip back-and-forth the next weekend for his memorial. On Sunday we returned from our 3rd trip to IL this month...so I've spent about 50 hours of this month in the car, eating bad food, sleeping (not well or enough) on a painfully firm mattress while at my IL's, you get the picture.... Lately my runs have included as much walking as running and shin splints, tight calves, and the numb feet that almost always follow. I can almost predict the onset of these, now. Good sleep = pain-free runs....poor sleep = painful runs. I haven't had more than a smattering of good nights of sleep all month. Anyhow, last night I couldn't sleep because I was stressed-out that if I didn't get a good night's sleep (for a change) that my run would suck. So I didn't get a good night's sleep and my run did suck. My bad runs (ie the runs where effort outweighs quality and neither is good) this past month have far outweighed the good...which causes more stress, lack of sleep, and generally crappy attitude towards everything, including my runs. While I know this is temporary (at least I hope this is the case), it still sucks to be in the middle of it. I am REALLY looking forward to catching up on sleep this weekend and hopefully derailing this stupid cycle. I want Dec. to be a month like Sept. and Oct. were. I want my mileage to be back in the 20-25 mile/week range, instead of struggling to make 15 and being miserable for most of those miles. I really miss running for pleasure, instead of running just to keep myself from losing all conditioning I worked so hard to build. k

I have to second what Sistinas has said!!

i can relate to that...my 19 month old (who now have mastered the power of the word "no" not for the purpose of good) and I have been passing colds and coughs back and forth for about a month now so good night sleeps have been rare...between trying to get better healthwise and being afraid to lose more marathon training time i'm probably not allowing myself to get better. Tried to take some runs off during the week but that left the quality of the long runs much worse. Strangely enough the last time i felt 100% was in October...maybe that Vicious Cycle thy name is November ???

Kirsten - you know from my other thread that I had a similar issue today. My little girl has a terrible cold and I spend most of the night waiting for her to be sick from too much coughing - plus I am getting up at 5:45am to run. I feel exhausted all the time at the moment. I think that that on top of the two major arguments I had yesterday made for a bad run day for me. You've been under loads of stress of late, you need some loving girl! I don't think that I would want to stop running though. I am going to look at running some new routes, I find that I feel refreshed when the view is new! You could leave the stop watch at home and just run for fun for a while. I know that filling in the log can be addictive, but I find running less stressful when I am not trying to impress or improve and I need to remember that i started doing this because I really do enjoy to run. One last idea -if you don't want to give the running a rest - how about including some trail running. I am going to do my long run this weekend at a park/ nature reserve. I want to focus on something different and inject a new idea into the mix. Keeping it fresh might help you to find your 'running fun' again. Claire xxx