A running related topic for a change, because looking at the front page, I haven't found many.

I came across this blog entry from a fairly well known distance running coach. In a nutshell, the author suggests that excessive emotional stress, like excessive running stress, can cause a runner to break down and fail to make adaptations to training.

Looking at the anecdotal evidence provided by my own running history, this make sense to me. I have struggled in times of high stress caused school, work, and other such stress inducers. I would also say that I run better under a similar training load when I get a break from my typical daily routine and am able to relax and take my mind off everything.

Has anyone else made any observations regarding how emotional stress affects their training?

Yes.  In times of high work or personal stress, my training can go either way.  Sometimes a hard day in Court or a bad day at the office translates into an excellent interval session, while other bad days (personal or professional) make the run go horribly run.

I've also found that when I am stressed about my asthma, my training and races go a certain way.  For example, if on marathon week I'm coughing from asthma and I stress too much about that, the race usually gives me an asthma attack.  Other times, if I don't let that stress worry me too much, the marathon goes well.  Same goes with training.

I guess I am strange. I typically dont stress about anything. If I cant control it, I dont worry about it. There is a whole lot in life I cant control and I dont pay much attention to that stuff.

I kinda wish I was that Peter from office space - "It's not that I'm lazy; it's that I just don't care." I do attempt to take this attitude with many things.

I also run before work or family has a chance to ruin my day.

I definitely find this to be true for myself, although the kinds of stress, to me, seem to have an effect.  I find that short bursts of high stress don't have an adverse effect, but long periods of higher-than-normal diffuse life stress definitely seem to.  It doesn't seem to be just because I don't have as much time to devote to running when my life is stressful.

This past spring/ summer I was going through an extremely stressful time with a major relationship and living situation change, and though I had enough time to run, I was pretty much stressed all the time and (to my mind at least) not progressing very much in my running.  Now, though my life is more time-crunched than ever, I am seeing a decent amount of progress, and since October have set big PRs at the 5-mile, 15K, and HM distances.

(I know some here discredit the ideas/methods of Maffetone; his book deals a lot with this subject and, like Magness' blog post,  also suggests that all stress is stress and that an overload can cause you to stop adapting to training, and suggests that if you're going through a stressful period of your life you may be better off cutting back on your training)

Definitely true. I had a few situations of extreme stress in the past 2 years and in all times i felt a lot weaker in my running.

That's interesting.  I don't think I've been running long enough to have much input, but I can see how there might be a correlation.

It depends. When it negatively affects either my sleep or my appetite, my running suffers.

This ties in nicely with an article I read today about how much presidents age while in office.  In one of the iconic photos of Lincoln taken late in his term, he looks 75.  He's 56.  He is not the striking lawyer that left Springfield, Illinois.  It all has to do with the fact that they are under extreme stress constantly which causes their bodies to produce a lot of stress hormones.  The only treatment is exercise.  Still, it is beyond question that emotional stress has physiological impacts so it should be beyond question that a high level of emotional stress has a negative impact on your training.  I don't see how it could be otherwise.

Here's a link to that article.

Why Presidents Age