You’ll be very lucky if as a runner, you don’t go through the occasional bad patch. I hadn’t planned for this week’s post to be on that subject, but as I suddenly find myself struggling, with every run being slow, laboured and difficult, it feels like the right moment to consider why it happens and how best to deal with it when it does. It can be simply a physical thing – general tiredness caused by the everyday stresses of normal life, and so long as this doesn’t continue beyond perhaps a week or so, you should be able to ease back slightly and run through it. Of course if a sudden loss of form or energy combined with the loss of desire to go out becomes more prolonged, it could be indicating a medical issue which may need a visit to the doctor, so don’t neglect that.
But even if the cause is not medical it can still quite quickly become psychological, leading to a vicious circle of poor performance / slow jogging feels like hard work / loss of confidence / no desire to run / reduced training / poor performance etc etc. It can be worthwhile reflecting on your current situation to try to identify what might be causing this negativity. For me, right now I think the fact that we are in the depth of winter, so almost every run is in the dark, cold and usually wet isn’t helping. Even very slow paced runs feel difficult. The fact that there’s little prospect of a return to normal racing or outdoor competition anytime soon is de-motivating and the ever present negativity of the whole Covid situation seems to feed into the general malaise. If you find yourself in this situation, I’d say there are three possible courses of action which I’ll list in order of recommendation:
- Simply accept that it’s inevitable that very occasionally this sort of “slump” will happen, and that the best thing to do is to scale back your running to just a couple of unpressured runs a week for two or three weeks or until you get your “mojo” back. Don’t wear a watch – you don’t need to keep seeing the reminder that you’re running slower than usual.
- Take a complete break. Give yourself the time you need to forget about running for a while. Two, three maybe four weeks? The chances are you’ll soon be more than ready to get back out there.
- Carry on regardless and just keep on with your normal routine even if it is much slower and more difficult in the hope that you’ll “run through it”. This could be the risky option, as if you are suffering some underlying fatigue there’s a high chance of it leading to illness or injury.
I’ve said before that if you aren’t enjoying it running can feel like a drag, so it’s far better to have a rest and get the hunger back than risk burning the desire out.
Check the blog regularly – 80+ posts and counting. Or quick search to see different subjects on the Index page. Hit the subscribe button below – it costs nothing, to receive the next post “on the subject of…..”
On the subject of running..... 