Now that you know the science, here's how it feels to hang yourself over the edge of overtraining
And so it begins. I wake up from a nap one afternoon and fix myself 2 cups of coffee before the ice training session. There is no effect, despite the strong dose of caffeine. I get my stuff together. Crap! I'm late already.
"How are you feeling today?" (Don't talk to me.) "Ready to go fast? I am." (Snarl.)
After a half-hearted warmup on the track, I change into my training suit and bring my skating stuff up to the benches in the center of the oval. I sit there, catching my breath after the hike up the stairs, staring at the ice for a few minutes. Damn, I hate ice skating sometimes; don't want to be here right now. I grab my stopwatch, MP3 player and water bottle, and step out onto the ice.
You know the difference between "good pain" and "bad pain?" Well, I'm feeling some bad pain right now. There is a sharp pain in my left outer quad that makes it very difficult to sit in the skating position. I do 4 laps for my warmup instead of the usual 6.
I'm feeling so bad - like a wounded animal that wants to crawl deep into the forest and die alone; skate alone. Nobody watch me die. Sometimes, speedskating is a grotesque display of human agony.
"Boris, I need to skate by myself right now."
"Come on, Eva," says a teammate of mine, "It will be easier to skate in our draft."
(Flash forward: "Woo-hoo! We just held all 35's!") I wanted no part of that, when my schedule called for a progressive series of 4X (41,40,39, 38), and I was already sensing that I'd have trouble just finishing the laps.
Yeah, I just let the guys go, figuring they'd get the point. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it; frowned to narrow my focus. When I have a hard time getting motivated, threats usually work: "You could be in the LAB right now, Eva. DO YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO THE LAB?"
After a sarcastic laugh at my own expense, I check my stopwatch: Beep, beep, beep. It works. Then I turn up my MP3 player until my ears hurt to make it all go away:
"Start a fight I can't defend
One more time
Dammit I changed again..."
OK
OK
OK
A few deep breaths...
and...
go
Thirteen laps into my first set, some members of the skeleton team- who are running sprints on the track- learn that gold medals don't just fall out of the sky. I can see the horrified expression on one guy's face as I skate by; looking down, I see that there's a rope of drool connecting the back of my throat to the outside of my left knee. Gross! Don't let the children see. "Isn't ice skating pretty?"
At least my musical selection continues to be appropriate:
"Try to make it through
Fuck your decision
I can't feel myself
But I'm burning up now!"
Never mind medals. This is what it takes to crack the Top 20 in my sport...Right?
Once I begin my second set of laps, there is no more screaming pain. A blessed numbness settles in and remains for the rest of the training week, which I somehow manage to complete. There are two hours of bike intervals on the schedule for the following day, and sprints, tempos and weights the day after that.
Our coach goes on a trip overseas, and he will be away for a week, so we're on our own for a while. After a full weekend of rest, more all-out ice tempos are scheduled for Monday. By that afternoon I'm feeling sleepy, so I decide to put off the tempos until Tuesday morning. I fall into bed at 1 PM, wake up at 5 to heat some leftovers for dinner, then return to bed and sleep through the night.
On Tuesday morning, after 17 hours of sleep since Monday afternoon, my resting heart rate has somehow shot up to 68 beats per minute. This is not a good sign. I try to do the 400 and 800-meter tempos on ice, fail miserably, and leave after only one 400.
After doing some more reading on overtraining prevention, I decide to take 48 hours of rest before attempting to train again. Two days later, my resting heart rate still hasn't dropped below 66. After three days, I decide to try a weight workout anyway.
Morning heart rate data like this is frightening. It makes me think: How deep is this hole into which I have dug myself? How long will it take me to get out? Will I end up in worse shape than I was before I started this hard training cycle? Did it all go to waste?
By mid-week, my brain function has returned to the point where I can think logically once agin. I realize that, had I still been capable of training, this would have been Week 5 of a hard training cycle! No wonder I was unable to complete the workouts. How could I have been such a blithering idiot? You can't train hard for 5 straight weeks, if you've been doing everything on the program, and doing it right.
The only thing left for me to do now is to try everything possible to recover from this, and, when I come back, to take more control over my own training. I need to make a commitment to listen to my own body -- rather than trying to drown out the signals it is giving me. I can't get caught up in worrying if somebody is thinking of me as a "weak and whining girl," because, in the end, this season is my own responsibility. Only I will be left with the consequences of screwing it up in a stupid way.
And so it begins. I wake up from a nap one afternoon and fix myself 2 cups of coffee before the ice training session. There is no effect, despite the strong dose of caffeine. I get my stuff together. Crap! I'm late already.
"How are you feeling today?" (Don't talk to me.) "Ready to go fast? I am." (Snarl.)
After a half-hearted warmup on the track, I change into my training suit and bring my skating stuff up to the benches in the center of the oval. I sit there, catching my breath after the hike up the stairs, staring at the ice for a few minutes. Damn, I hate ice skating sometimes; don't want to be here right now. I grab my stopwatch, MP3 player and water bottle, and step out onto the ice.
You know the difference between "good pain" and "bad pain?" Well, I'm feeling some bad pain right now. There is a sharp pain in my left outer quad that makes it very difficult to sit in the skating position. I do 4 laps for my warmup instead of the usual 6.
I'm feeling so bad - like a wounded animal that wants to crawl deep into the forest and die alone; skate alone. Nobody watch me die. Sometimes, speedskating is a grotesque display of human agony.
"Boris, I need to skate by myself right now."
"Come on, Eva," says a teammate of mine, "It will be easier to skate in our draft."
(Flash forward: "Woo-hoo! We just held all 35's!") I wanted no part of that, when my schedule called for a progressive series of 4X (41,40,39, 38), and I was already sensing that I'd have trouble just finishing the laps.
Yeah, I just let the guys go, figuring they'd get the point. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it; frowned to narrow my focus. When I have a hard time getting motivated, threats usually work: "You could be in the LAB right now, Eva. DO YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO THE LAB?"
After a sarcastic laugh at my own expense, I check my stopwatch: Beep, beep, beep. It works. Then I turn up my MP3 player until my ears hurt to make it all go away:
"Start a fight I can't defend
One more time
Dammit I changed again..."
OK
OK
OK
A few deep breaths...
and...
go
Thirteen laps into my first set, some members of the skeleton team- who are running sprints on the track- learn that gold medals don't just fall out of the sky. I can see the horrified expression on one guy's face as I skate by; looking down, I see that there's a rope of drool connecting the back of my throat to the outside of my left knee. Gross! Don't let the children see. "Isn't ice skating pretty?"
At least my musical selection continues to be appropriate:
"Try to make it through
Fuck your decision
I can't feel myself
But I'm burning up now!"
Never mind medals. This is what it takes to crack the Top 20 in my sport...Right?
Once I begin my second set of laps, there is no more screaming pain. A blessed numbness settles in and remains for the rest of the training week, which I somehow manage to complete. There are two hours of bike intervals on the schedule for the following day, and sprints, tempos and weights the day after that.
Our coach goes on a trip overseas, and he will be away for a week, so we're on our own for a while. After a full weekend of rest, more all-out ice tempos are scheduled for Monday. By that afternoon I'm feeling sleepy, so I decide to put off the tempos until Tuesday morning. I fall into bed at 1 PM, wake up at 5 to heat some leftovers for dinner, then return to bed and sleep through the night.
On Tuesday morning, after 17 hours of sleep since Monday afternoon, my resting heart rate has somehow shot up to 68 beats per minute. This is not a good sign. I try to do the 400 and 800-meter tempos on ice, fail miserably, and leave after only one 400.
After doing some more reading on overtraining prevention, I decide to take 48 hours of rest before attempting to train again. Two days later, my resting heart rate still hasn't dropped below 66. After three days, I decide to try a weight workout anyway.
Morning heart rate data like this is frightening. It makes me think: How deep is this hole into which I have dug myself? How long will it take me to get out? Will I end up in worse shape than I was before I started this hard training cycle? Did it all go to waste?
By mid-week, my brain function has returned to the point where I can think logically once agin. I realize that, had I still been capable of training, this would have been Week 5 of a hard training cycle! No wonder I was unable to complete the workouts. How could I have been such a blithering idiot? You can't train hard for 5 straight weeks, if you've been doing everything on the program, and doing it right.
The only thing left for me to do now is to try everything possible to recover from this, and, when I come back, to take more control over my own training. I need to make a commitment to listen to my own body -- rather than trying to drown out the signals it is giving me. I can't get caught up in worrying if somebody is thinking of me as a "weak and whining girl," because, in the end, this season is my own responsibility. Only I will be left with the consequences of screwing it up in a stupid way.
posted by Eva at 9:39 AM
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