I’m going to be honest: I did all my scheduled training sessions, but on Friday after a series of hill sprints, my soleus (calf) muscle is unhappy again. So, thought I’d share my ongoing struggle with learning how to train “smart” because no matter how much you train, if you show up to a starting line injured, you might has well have not trained at all. This is especially true for athletes who might also throw themselves heart-first into “hard core” training for various reasons (I’ll go into those reasons in a minute) and who approach the challenge of a new starting line with reckless abandon… which, I’ve learned the hard way, is not really the best way to go about training yourself for an event, especially an endurance one.
In the past, that’s how I handled pretty much everything—with reckless abandon. When I was marathoning, I would double my prescribed mileage, cut down the recovery time between intervals on the track and get mad at myself for the overuse injuries at inevitably surfaced (tendonitis, predominantly.)
When I shifted to triathlon, it was a “bad” day if I didn’t get in 2-3 training sessions per day, every day. That meant I woke up at 4 a.m. everyday to swim with the local master’s team, spent my lunch hour running and then would hit the bike for a two-hour effort after work. This was followed up by weekend training sessions when I’d go out for a six-hour ride followed by a forty-minute run and then a long run on Sunday. My weekly training load approached 25 hours (on top of a 40-hour work week) and I honestly felt terrible, both physically and mentally. (I still remember complaining to another woman on the swim team that I felt simply and perpetually bloated. She told me I probably was: extended and excessive stress does that to the human body. I think I dropped about five pounds after I crossed the Ironman finish line as a giant exhale of relief.)
When doing double-centuries, and in particular, the California Triple Crown Stage Race, all of my focus and effort migrated to the bike where I’d wake up and ride CompuTrainer by myself every morning, take lunch hour to ride and the end the day with another (yes, you guessed it) ride.
CompuTraining as the sun rises. Thank you to Great Basin Bicycles where other cyclists don’t mind riding with me indoors.
While I certainly had the movement and muscle patterns down for these events, I also had a lot of fatigue, I often fought (like bare-knuckled fought) with burnout. Oh yeah, and I was a mental mess. Did I ever DNF while training like this? Admittedly, no, but I’ve often wondered—looking back on this wreckage of reckless abandon— if I wouldn’t have been more successful (and would have shed a lot less tears) if I had trained smarter, not necessarily harder.
This lesson resonates with me especially after this year when I decided to take a break from racing and re-focus my life. In addition to expanding the activities I do (running, rowing, weight training, pilates and dance now accompany my miles on the bike) I don’t train nearly the amount of hours I used to. And yet, something strange has happened: my running speed has increased and my watts on the bike have increased, too.
So wait … what?? Let me write that again: even though I’m training less (I’m performing less volume of total physical work) I’m fitter, stronger and leaner…and my mental health is, honestly, in a lot better shape, too. (So is the condition of my house because I’m around to clean it, but maybe that’s another blog.)
A part of what brought about this desire to change happened almost exactly a year ago. My performance on the bike was stellar, but I didn’t feel healthy. Then there were a series of wildfires that basically ended my outdoor race season early and that meant all of my riding would happen indoors and the thought of that sounded worse than not riding at all.
That was how I decided to sign up for Orange Theory Fitness (they share a parking lot with Great Basin Bicycles, so it’s very convenient) and in my first class— me, the “super athlete”, the “strongest female cyclist in the Alta Alpina Road Race Series of 2018”— my legs nearly faltered after a set of jump lunges. And I had this moment when I thought I was going to have to lie down and rest for a while after that 50-minute OTF class that maybe I’d gotten something wrong about training. Or, maybe I’d gotten a lot of it wrong and it was time for a massive revision.
So, I’ve spent a year (2019, basically) living a massive revision because:
I wasn’t happy at the end of my 2018 race season, and if you’re not happy racing then don’t do it because it’s not like you’re getting paid to ride around in a lycra onesie , and;
what if I really had a lot to learn about training and I have, for the past decade, been blind to it?
My new, revised schedule for the bulk of last year included ZERO double days. Yup— if I did an OTF workout, I didn’t ride. If I rode, I didn’t do OTF.
My weekly training hours plummeted. And at first I had this strange panic attack that went something like: OMG I’m getting fat! I’m so fat, I’m getting fat. But wait, it’s only been five minutes. Breathe. Honestly, you’re not fatter now than you were a few minutes before. I started to like having one workout a day because I could focus on it, plan for it and make the most out of my time. I also started to like my training sessions a lot more. It was a welcome break from my job where I’m indoors and at a desk most of the day. It was also a welcome break from housework.
I started sleeping more— and sleeping better. The zombie feeling that I’ve been carrying around for basically ten years went away. I started having dreams that make me laugh again. I started looking forward to going to work and doing my best to write news stories to promote the good work that students and faculty do at the college I work for. I started reading books— fiction, poetry, nonfiction— and I started writing more of my creative work, too. I started valuing my time at home—my time with Rich and my animals. I was alive for all aspects of my life. And, when it was time to ride the bike IT WAS TIME TO RIDE THE BIKE. When it was time to run, IT WAS TIME TO RUN. And then, when it wasn’t, it wasn’t and I tackled relaxation and recovery just as hard as I tackled training.
In my extra time, I read a book by Matt Fitzgerland (How Bad Do You Want It?) on sports psychology that devotes an entire chapter to the kind of athlete I used to be: the chronic over-trainer. He claims this compulsion comes from a place of fear: that you don’t believe in yourself, and so you load up on the training hours—overload them— which ultimately undermines your goals and turns into this self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, I trained and trained harder than they said and I still didn’t make it, so I have to train harder still. He cites an example of a young triathlete who would have just trained herself to death if it hadn’t been for a particular coach who said, basically STOP!! You have to trust yourself.
And when she did, she trained less. She got more sleep. She focused on her training sessions with an increased physical presence and mental clarity. This triathlete would go on to win a world championship. What had been stopping her? The fact that she really didn’t believe in her training… or herself. When she conquered that, she was unstoppable.
It’s hard not to read myself into that. I’ve certainly been afraid that there are races and events I can’t do. I probably overtrain because I have been on both extremes of the weight spectrum— when I was in high school, I got down to 89 lbs because I stopped eating. (There’s a whole book I could write about that. Maybe I will, one day.) I felt deliriously powerful as this angular girl. I was, as you can imagine, very unhealthy. My hair fell out in clumps, and I had to take some sort of medication to keep my heart on a regular cadence. But for the first time in my life, I felt like people saw me, the real me. And that was powerful. When I gained weight, I gained a lot of weight. I think I was around 160 pounds when I walked across the stage to receive my high school diploma. That’s a lot for a girl who’s only 5’2. That heavy girl didn’t feel powerful at all; she felt ugly and judged. And honestly: people treated me differently and made a lot of assumptions about who I was and what I believed in. I learned a lot from the year when I weighed both 89 and 160 pounds, but the biggest lesson was this: the physical body is inscribed with meaning, whether or not we want it there.
It was Fitzgerald’s idea, though, that was I training from a place of fear, that made me want to change. I want a steady, studied and purposeful practice done with intention, love and determination— not with fear. And maybe, just maybe when I’m called upon to answer the question: “how bad do you want it?” I’ll be prepared to say that you want it more than the other guy. And that’s not an answer you can pull from a place of fatigue. That comes from a position of strength and belief in your own capabilites.
So— for this week, I’m not running and I’m going to let my soleus calm down. Instead of being upset about it, I’m actually really looking forward to sharing additional miles with Rich on the bike, and for mixing up the routine that has become, well, routine.
My plan, moving forward, is to take Sundays off of all training, completely, and take that time to: read a poem, hang out with my chickens, meet up with my writer’s group and to spend time with Mister.
As we head into the heart of the holiday season, Id’ encourage my other over-trainers to really think about why you’re doing that extra hour-session. Does it come from a place of fear or insufficiency?
You don’t have to choose between spending time with your family and training. It’s really all about balance. Don’t live your life from a place of fear. Live it from a place of inspiration and love. I can’t even say how grateful I am to have found this space. Only that: I wish I would have found it a long time ago. <3
Be sure to follow my journey here on my High Mileage blog, and if you like what you read (or want to learn more about #TeamCarter2020, Arthritis and why I train so much) go here, and know I’ll ride an extra 100 just for you.