Forums >General Running>Potential Over-Training and emotional stress
Hi all, I'm new here. I'm training for my second half marathon. Things were going really for the first several weeks of my training plan, but I'm noticing a drop in my VO2 max stats after a run. I have a Garmin device, and it also seems to be indicating I'm not recovering my "body battery" when I sleep the way I used to. I was recently diagnosed with asthma and began taking a daily use inhaler. I'm not sure if that's involved or not. I seem to be under-performing and I feel tired a lot.
Also, I recently had some very severe emotional distress; I was t-boned by a drunk driver. Went to the doctor and he cleared me for physical activity, because I wasn't injured, but I'm feeling like running has been a little bit harder since then. I'm honestly pretty pissed off at this woman; she could have killed me and this stress might be having an impact on my ability for an event I've put a ton of sincere efforts into training for.
My race is 7/19. How many days can I reasonably take off to recuperate and rest before I get back to the last part of my training? I'm concerned about losing progress, but even more concerned about over-training and tanking my performance in the actual race.
Any advice or guidance from more experienced runners? I still consider myself a novice.
Sorry to hear and glad you weren't physically injured. Traumatic stress like that takes a lot of energy out of you and can severely limit your ability to train--and more importantly recover from training. With a week and a half to go until your race, there's very little you can do to improve your physical fitness, so I think you should prioritize rest and recovery and just do some very relaxed and easy running. You won't lose much fitness in that amount of time from lack of training and you'll perform much better than if you try to push through the rest of your training and get to the starting line mentally and physically exhausted.
Runners run
Thanks for the reply! I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughtful advice and I will take it to heart. You're absolutely right; way better to slow down now than on race day, and I don't think I'm going to make dramatic changes to my athleticism in the next 10 days in either direction. Gotta keep the faith. Thanks again!
an amazing likeness
Let it go...that is, the training pressure -- It's better to toe the start under trained, fresh and feeling good.
I'm curious as to what race is actually happening 10 days from now?
Acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.
I live in Alaska, and we haven't been hit that hard by Covid. There is a women's half marathon that is primarily virtual, but they are also doing very small wave starts without the usual fanfare at the end. So no cupcakes and mimosas this year
And I'm dedicated. So I'll still go out and run the course even if it's a virtual event. I ran a virtual 12k a little while back and instead of the usual finish line beer/root beer I got a metal pint glass that says "Twilight 12k 2020. I swear I did it!" Haha.
Are we there, yet?
My race is 7/19. How many days can I reasonably take off to recuperate and rest before I get back to the last part of my training? I'm concerned about losing progress, but even more concerned about over-training and tanking my performance in the actual race. Any advice or guidance from more experienced runners? I still consider myself a novice.
With 10 days to go, you should be cutting back and tapering anyway. Focus on getting to the starting line well rested, which is one of the primary purposes of a taper.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
SMART Approach
Agree with above. Your training is done. You probably have some physical and mental overtraining stress so easy runs up till race will likely help you absorb your training and and replenish and make you stronger on race day.
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