A running blog about not running

It’s been three months since the hundred. During which time, I have been discovering that the hundred was the easy part, and getting over it the difficult bit. Which seems ridiculous, but there you go.

The whole recovery process has been completely tedious and I haven’t enjoyed it at all. Of course, it’s nice to sit around and eat tea and drink cake and get your thoughts back in sync for a few days afterwards, but after that I miss running and being out and enjoying myself. And sure, you’d expect to feel a bit tied and sore for a few days afterwards something like that I suppose, but after that I would have thought (and indeed, my experience tells) that then you start to feel gradually back to normal again.

Not this time. First the tiredness, and then the emptiness set in that it was over, and the frustration with myself for not performing as well as I wanted. All sorts of thoughts were flying through my head, that I should enter another one straight away and prove to myself I could do it better than I had done, or that I should plan long routes to run by myself, and run and run and run….I spent hours looking at events and thinking of routes…..cycles of thoughts that went round and round, even though I knew they were irrational and unhelpful.

But the weeks went by, and I tried long runs and couldn’t even get round at a snails pace without feeling completely exhausted, and I realised doing something similar again would probably end in disaster. I did try a 50 miler on the South Downs with Andrew and some friends, three weeks after, and everyone else was fine but I had to pull out half way around. Something in my head suddenly seemed to snap, and I went from generally being quite positive out running and keen to try to keep up with the others even if at a faster pace than me, to always sticking at the back, believing I couldn’t keep up, dragging myself round and hating myself for struggling.

I did manage an overnight 50 miler a couple of weeks later (mostly because I thought it was going to be a walk – long story – and the fear of being left by myself in the dark was apparently enough to give me a renewed energy) and had a few parts where I surprised myself by feeling quite good, but still this overwhelming exhaustion. I was having weird heart palpitations; my heart felt it was racing and beating really hard even from something as small as standing up and going upstairs, something I wouldn’t even have noticed before.

All in all, it was pretty pants. This hobby that had been such a large and positive part of my life for years suddenly felt like it had been taken away. All the good feelings I got from it had disappeared, all the trips and weekends away doing long-distance paths, all the events I loved doing and the friends and people I met, all felt like something from another life and something I couldn’t take part in any more.

So I stopped completely for a couple of weeks, and then only did very small runs for a while. It was a bit demoralising, but at least I was running again. Once I’d got used to that, I started trying to do it more regularly, and then that’s where I am now, just trying to build the distance up gradually. I think my body is getting there, but my mind is a bit behind things. It’s amazing when you think of it, that just a few bad experiences can have such an effect on your mental state, despite years of good experiences before that.

Although I know running 100 miles is physically and mentally draining, and everyone tells me that different people will recover in different ways, I can’t believe that that can be the whole story. I mean, I can compare myself to myself because I’ve done it twice now, and the first time I got over it fine. So why would it be so different now?

I’ve been reading into something called Over Training Syndrome, which I know can’t be exactly what I have, as I’m not an elite athlete (sob!) or anything like that, but perhaps it is something along those lines. I had a look at what runs I’d been doing over the last 18 months.

After The Hundred 2016, I took a few weeks to recover, but then got right back into marathons/ultras and did another 11 between July – November, to reach my goal of 50 marathons/ultras by the end of the year. I remember I then took December as a bit of downtime just doing short runs, and then in January started training for the 100 with Andrew, and in the first 21 weeks of this year (up until The 100 weekend) I did 23 marathons/ultras. Compared to the same period last year, when I only did 8. So maybe doing three times as many might explain some of it.

I also did more back to back marathons/ ultras this time around, and 14 ultras in this time period this year, compared to 5 last year. So maybe the cumulative amount of running from the start of 2016 without really having much recovery could have caused part of it, and then doing The 100 in a tired state to start with, and then having a difficult event, was the final straw. Who knows. It’s a not a theory I particularly like very much….basically that your body and mind can’t quite keep up with things. But then it’s important to get the balance right I suppose, to look after yourself in the long term and be able to keep running as what I always loved it for: to keep healthy, happy in mind, see friends, and explore the world.

I found this article quite interesting. 

Anyway, that’s that. 

In more exciting news, next week I am off on a trip to New Zealand and Australia with Andrew for a couple of months! As part of my rehabilitation programme, I am going to resurrect the idea of ‘100 days of running’ and try to run somewhere new each day - to get back to seeing running as a way to explore new places, and being an enjoyable part of my day. I will be keeping a track on here....so watch this space!