Our brain vs our ego
We are so bad at letting our ego have a louder voice than our brain.
Yesterday I was forced to slow down after I woke up with symptoms of a cold. I slowed right down, took the day off work and rested, and am over the bulk of it already today.
It’s kind of laughable because just on Monday I was talking about the recent fluctuations in my mileage, and how I wanted to bring the consistency back.
So my ego’s saying:
Screw slowing down! You put it out there in public that you’re not going to run up & down anymore. In public! It needs to start this week. NO COMPROMISE!
It really is the anti-blerch.
The ego is only interested in short term gains. It has no vision. It’s taken me many years to learn how to tune it out. I choose the vision, I choose the longterm gain.
Getting sick for the 2nd time in 3 weeks may be a sign that I’m over training. But it doesn’t feel like I’m over training…maybe that’s a strong sign that I am actually over training. Denial.
Since when has somebody ever admitted a problem when they’re in the middle of it?
So yesterday I asked myself this — am I over resting?
The answer for me was a definite NO!
Changing the question back to are you over training? The answer was maybe, at best. I can’t bring myself to say yes. That’s my ego talking. It restricts me from slowing down so I can get stronger. It restricts me from admitting defeat so I can learn.
Over training is not necessarily doing too much training. Over training could be a lack of recovery.
The current training may not look that bad on paper, and you may feel that you’ve built up to it. But if my body’s already run down, I’m going to run into problems. Truth is, my body has been slammed after the North Face race, and a brisk 30k long run on Sunday put me over the edge.
Coach and I agreed today to have an easy week of reduced mileage andintensity. Some of it was forced by my light cold I had on Tuesday anyway. But that was a good thing, that triggered this whole rethink.
My race methodology really is “listen to your body”. Yeah that saying is somewhat of a cliche now, there’s no better way to put it though.
In my opinion training plans are best served as a guide, and your coach is themediator between your guide and your body. Listen to your body and your coach, but don’t just blindly follow a training plan…
