There are a lot of sayings out there about how running is mind over matter and how you can’t give up when your mind gives out. You have to power through doubt and uncertainty. You have to do what you think you can’t do.
But what about when your body is uncertain? I’m not talking about when you’re sore or injured – sometimes there are times when your body absolutely needs rest. But what about those times that you just aren’t feeling it? When you are just completely sluggish and can’t get moving?
It happens to the best of us. It can happen due to over-training or less-than-ideal nutrition or poor sleep or any number of reasons. Sometimes your body just isn’t into it.
I’ve been going through a bit of this lately, and I think it’s a combination of the above reasons. My diet needs to be better, I need to sleep more, and I’ve been training quite a bit. So how am I dealing with this?
Well, one thing I’ve done is slightly trim back my training program. My plan has called for quite a few mid-week ten mile runs. Since I run before work, that means getting up incredibly early. Some days, I know it’s possible. Some days, I know it’s not going to happen. But rather than skip the run, I drop it back to 6 miles or so. That helps quite a bit. I freely admit that I have also missed more workouts than I like. I’ve been getting in the running, but not necessarily the cross-training I need.
What I’m trying to not do is just plan to skip a workout all together. And if I do, I try to skip the “easiest” workout of the week. So if I have a 4 mile run on Tuesday and an 8 mile run on Thursday and I’m not sure I’m going to make it through them both, maybe I’ll rest on Tuesday and run 8 on Wednesday and then do something different on Thursday.
Some days though, I just find myself turning off the alarm and going back to sleep unplanned. As long as I don’t do it all of the time, I tell myself it’s okay. Sometimes you just need rest.
I think those are the kinds of problems that most of us who exercise regularly run into. Most of us probably need more sleep than we get or better nutrition, and it’s always good to push ourselves toward those things.
If over-training might be the problem that’s causing you to “not feel it,” it could be that your workout routine is getting too routine. If I find myself with that kind of feeling, and it’s not just one time but several times a week or more than one week in a row, I start thinking about whether my workout routine has gotten stale. Maybe it’s time to focus more on the cross-training instead of the running. Maybe it’s time to back off the running and spend more time in the gym building strength, or doing sprint workouts to build speed. Maybe it’s time to incorporate plyometrics, to train things in a different way. Maybe it’s time to switch it up for a month and then get back to what was working for you before.
There’s my $.02.