Learning lessons

A lot has happened in the two and a half weeks since my last update, from being crowned fastest male in Mecklenburg County to feeling just about the slowest! I ran a solid 5k and mile on the track followed by a disastrous showing the other night in Championship week. I won my second GP race in a row at the Summer Breeze 5k to solidify my position at the top of the leaderboard (2 wins, 3 2nds and a 3rd in the 6 races to date) but had a couple of pretty poor workouts as well.

In short I've been showing signs of over-racing and at the moment I'm a little concerned that I've tipped myself over the edge of over training, with not much time to get my mojo back in time for the Masters 10k at the end of the month.

Let's look at the evidence. Since the start of April I have raced 10 times on the road and 5 times on the track. That is ridiculous, especially when you consider the weather conditions we face at this time of year.

The Grand Prix is part of the problem as 5 of those races were packed into this time (with the remaining 5 races nicely spaced apart until October). I have a special affection for the Grand Prix and also am very motivated to try and win it this year at last so I have no regrets about running those races, it's just a shame the schedule is so front loaded. It's the other races in between that I could probably have done without competing in.

Also the track series. Originally Coach and I decided that we would use these evenings as one of the workouts for the week. Unfortunately there's a big difference between working out and racing and I was definitely racing all those weeks.

So this has taken its toll and I'm feeling pretty tired right now. This week
was already scheduled as a down week so I'm making extra sure that I do use this week as a recovery week. In that way I can hopefully nip this in the bud and get back on track for the 10k.

One thing that will help with all this is that Lisa has taken the girls to VA to stay with her Mom for a couple of weeks now that school's out. So my running schedule is a lot more flexible and I have much more time for doing all the other stuff before and after runs that is so important. Not to mention that I can look forward to a nice couple of restful/napful weekends of tennis and TDF watching!

So the lesson from this post readers is never lose sight of your main goal, focus on the long term race and not the short term ones in between. Listen to your body and back off when it seems that would be the best thing to do regardless of what your training plan says.

Happy running!