"Listen to your body" is an often used phrase when determining how much training you do / how hard you train / when you should rest etc.
Listening to my body is something I try to do but I must admit there have been numerous occasions where I have been guilty of ignoring what my body has been trying to tell me in my continuing quest to improve or these day just maintain my performances. Last week I did however, hear what my body had to say. As mentioned in a previous post my left calf had started giving me trouble again. so I eased down, with the plan of picking things up again over the weekend.
However, as the weekend approached I found that things where not going to plan. Towards the end of a very easy four mile canter as I ran the last mile, up the hill from the Derwent Walk to home my heart rate suddenly shot up to 176 bpm and I struggled to complete the mile in under 11 minutes.
To be honest I thought this was just a blip and repeated the same four mile run the following day. Once again it was the same story, with my heart rate operating in the usual range for the first three miles then jumping up to 173 bpm for the uphill section. The hill again taking well over 10 minutes to complete.
As a result, I decided to rest. This and particularly missing my long Sunday run meant that I was nowhere near my planned weekly mileage, achieving only 27 miles for the week.
However, on the positive side Monday saw me feeling a bit better in myself and quite a significant turn around as I ran the same 4 miles as last week as a tester. This time when I hit the hill at the end of the run I felt no real increase in effort other than what I would normally expect and my heart rate only went up to 142 bpm and taking only 8.32 to run.
A recent French study has found that cue's like those above are not the only indicators that perhaps you are over doing the training. Published in the Scandinavian, Journal of Medicine& Science in Sports. They say that mental sharpness can decrease as your miles increase, and that emotional cues, such as increased irritability often appear before physical ones when runners are on the verge of over training. The study also says that we can monitor our 'cognitive executive functions' such as working memory and attention span for clues that we doing too much.
Listening to my body is something I try to do but I must admit there have been numerous occasions where I have been guilty of ignoring what my body has been trying to tell me in my continuing quest to improve or these day just maintain my performances. Last week I did however, hear what my body had to say. As mentioned in a previous post my left calf had started giving me trouble again. so I eased down, with the plan of picking things up again over the weekend.
However, as the weekend approached I found that things where not going to plan. Towards the end of a very easy four mile canter as I ran the last mile, up the hill from the Derwent Walk to home my heart rate suddenly shot up to 176 bpm and I struggled to complete the mile in under 11 minutes.
To be honest I thought this was just a blip and repeated the same four mile run the following day. Once again it was the same story, with my heart rate operating in the usual range for the first three miles then jumping up to 173 bpm for the uphill section. The hill again taking well over 10 minutes to complete.
As a result, I decided to rest. This and particularly missing my long Sunday run meant that I was nowhere near my planned weekly mileage, achieving only 27 miles for the week.
However, on the positive side Monday saw me feeling a bit better in myself and quite a significant turn around as I ran the same 4 miles as last week as a tester. This time when I hit the hill at the end of the run I felt no real increase in effort other than what I would normally expect and my heart rate only went up to 142 bpm and taking only 8.32 to run.
A recent French study has found that cue's like those above are not the only indicators that perhaps you are over doing the training. Published in the Scandinavian, Journal of Medicine& Science in Sports. They say that mental sharpness can decrease as your miles increase, and that emotional cues, such as increased irritability often appear before physical ones when runners are on the verge of over training. The study also says that we can monitor our 'cognitive executive functions' such as working memory and attention span for clues that we doing too much.
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