Fatigue Redux

Real life adventures in resistance management

Shortly after sending Wednesday’s newsletter about fatigue resistance, I jogged over to my local gym for yet another round of punishment via treadmill. I’m not going to lie: This one kicked my butt. I mean, yeesh. Just look at that heart rate. 

Crispy.

With time and adaptation, I’m confident this type of training will pay massive dividends down the line. For now, the vertical workout left me feeling drained and depleted in a way I haven’t felt in months. The good news from a newsletter perspective is spending nearly an hour in an elevated state of high intensity effort provides a real-life example of training-induced fatigue. Oh joy! 

With symptoms that included sore muscles, an insatiable appetite, and an unfortunate case of what I like to call Runner Brain, managing the physiological fallout was as important from a training perspective as running the miles themselves. (Runner Brain is when you try to engage in any kind of cognitive task and your brain just goes, Nope.) 

Anyway, here’s some more advice on dealing with fatigue. 

Listen to your body 

You don’t get medals for blowing yourself up in training. The most important thing you can do when facing a heavy block is listen closely to what your body is saying. Chances are, you’re going to be sore. This is when you need to be able to tell the difference between normal runner soreness and shut-it-down-before-you-get-injured soreness. 

Understanding that difference is more art than metric. There’s a definite learning curve, but with experience comes some form of wisdom. Hopefully. If you find yourself in unfamiliar training waters and start to feel like you’re drowning, throw yourself a life raft and take a recovery day or two. If you’ve been here before, try to keep the larger picture in perspective. This may be an important chunk of training, but it’s still only one chunk. There will be many more to come.

Still, the whole point of this stuff is teaching your body how to continue running efficiently under physical duress. Training while fatigued is a necessary part of the equation if you’re going to run endurance events. Just be smart. Or as smart as you can be given the circumstances. 

(For real, I couldn’t have spelled C-A-T Wednesday afternoon if you spotted me the C and the T.)  

Eat to win (and then eat some more) 

As soon as I got home from the treadmill workout, I implemented Ultra Training Eating Rules. Loosely defined, UTER involves eating something nearly every hour, on the hour. That something can be as simple as grabbing a handful of peanuts, but my primary goal is prioritizing protein and minimizing processed foods whenever possible.

Along with eliminating gluten from my diet, there has been a major shift in nutritional focus from previous years when I happily consumed as many refined carbs as possible. One way I’ve done that is by leaning into bowls. Rice bowls, salad bowls, quinoa bowls, you name it. If you add enough things to a bowl, you've got yourself a meal. 

So many bowls.

Remember the piece I wrote a few weeks back about being disappointed by post-race weight gain? While I managed to drop a few pounds once we resumed training my weight hasn’t changed all that much because my nutritional needs increased along with the miles. 

That’s simply the cost of doing business. The alternative is trying to manage fatigue with a calorie deficit, which doesn’t seem all that wise. Another reminder that for runners, being smart takes many forms. 

Mindset over matter 

The day after the treadmill workout, I went out for a 10-mile run on trail with the goal of keeping my HR as low as possible. While this was objectively the “easiest” run on my schedule, it was arguably the toughest because there was nothing about the outing that was inherently motivating. No time goal. No workout conditions. Nothing. 

Also, it was rainy, windy, and a little chilly. Plus, my legs felt tired. And, I didn’t dress right. Beyond all that, I wasn’t even sure where to go. My usual route felt rote and a new one hadn’t taken shape, given a decided lack of morning creativity and enthusiasm. In a word, I was feeling blah. Not terrible by any means, but definitely not good. 

When I got to the trailhead, I gave myself two options. I could have fun despite all the available evidence to the contrary, or I could be miserable. I chose to have fun. Or, as much fun as 10 slow easy miles can be in the rain, which turned out to be a whole lot of fun, actually. 

I got lost. I got muddy. It was a real hoot, just like the owl who made a  surprise appearance at the exact moment when I started feeling sorry for myself. Most importantly, maintaing an open mindset in the face of self-inflicted adversity strengthened my brain just as much as the run worked my muscles. 

How else would you rather spend your morning hours? 

This is not the route of someone who, “Had a plan.”