Hey team, Coach Alexa here, online running coach for We Run.
I wanted to give a little bit of an example. I’ve done a few videos recently on the reasons why we might want to adjust people’s training plans for factors that are not directly running related.
As a coach, I’m planning all the time around people’s overall loading, planning out blocks of training, peaking people at the right time, all that sort of stuff. But there are lots and lots of different situations where that might mean that things need to be reassessed.
So I thought I’d almost give a little case study now.
When Life Stress Starts Affecting Training
So for various different reasons at the moment, there’s quite a few different stressful situations going on in my life at the moment.
One of the outcomes of that, obviously, there are practical things – that’s taking time to deal with those – but also a reasonable amount of stress, and alongside that, a decent dose of anxiousness going on in my brain and my body at the moment.
The knock-on effect of that for me currently, I can feel that physically because my resting heart rate is higher, my heart rate variability is a little bit lower.
I can feel it in my energy levels, motivation, sleep, and the amount of time during the day that I actually feel like I’m resting or being rested properly.
My brain feels very much in go mode at the moment, in doing mode, and also in worrying and threat mode. And that means that both my brain and body are not getting as much time as usual in that sort of soothe mode, that rest and digest mode, where our bodies are going to be much better at recovering.
Why Recovery Is Just as Important as Training
So I’ve had a bit of a rethink of my training at the moment.
I’m going to take the focus off some of the things that I find either mentally more challenging or are going to be really challenging me from an adaptation point of view.
I’m also going to be rethinking how I factor in enjoyment. I try and always factor enjoyment into my training and others because quite frankly, if you’re not enjoying it, why are you doing it?
But I want to make sure that I prioritise activities and training that are enjoyable, and that maybe tick a few different boxes as well.
That might be getting out on the trails with others, finding new routes, or staying with what I know so I don’t have to do too much thinking and replanning at the moment, and my anxious brain doesn’t have to problem solve too many things.
Adapting Training Around Real Life
So it’s just another example – working with myself, but absolutely working with all of the runners that I work with – as to things that might start to impact how we’re prioritising and training and changing and adapting that as the training phases progress.
Hope that’s useful. Happy running.
