And yet it felt harder than my PR??!? Like I literally was jogging up most of the hills. It was horrible.
I doubt my iron is low. I'm eating well. The only thing is I got 1-2 hours of sleep 2 nights before the race because I literally could not fall asleep. So what the heck happened?
You just answered your question. You got 2-4 hours of total sleep over 2 days. That’s half of what you should get daily, and you got that in a 2 day span.
And yet it felt harder than my PR??!? Like I literally was jogging up most of the hills. It was horrible.
I doubt my iron is low. I'm eating well. The only thing is I got 1-2 hours of sleep 2 nights before the race because I literally could not fall asleep. So what the heck happened?
It’s the new normal, only gets uphill from here on.
OP didn't say they didn't sleep the night before the race.
It could be anything but whenever I have underperformed (excepting illness or injury, or stomach issues) it's been because of a poor taper - typically doing too much in the days and weeks before the race.
can also consider whether you went out to fast at the start, weather conditions (hotter = slower), the elevation profile of the course etc. Some of these things combined could add a minute or two easily.
Running 4 MINUTES off your 5k PR it seems like you just quit. I could not sleep or eat for a week and run within 4 minutes of my 5k PR
Yeah 4 minutes is insane. Give me no sleep for a few days PLUS the flu and I still think I'd have a shot of getting within 4 minutes of a recent performance.
Bekele got almost no sleep for 2 nights in a row before Berlin 2021 but still managed to get within 5 minutes of his pretty much WR time in the thon on a hot day after splitting 61 for the first half. Sleep is important. With good weather and sleep he would of gotten the WR. Every person in the world would blow up and run over 2:10 or DNF if they were even capable of a 61 half mary. The OP just proves that sleep is important. I'm literally in the same boat. I feel like I'm drowning when I run with no sleep
And yet it felt harder than my PR??!? Like I literally was jogging up most of the hills. It was horrible.
I doubt my iron is low. I'm eating well. The only thing is I got 1-2 hours of sleep 2 nights before the race because I literally could not fall asleep. So what the heck happened?
If this really happened, then I'm assuming (or you wouldn't have asked the question) that you're at roughly the same level of fitness based on recents races/workouts and there wasn't some unusual external factor like crazy weather or a crazy tough course.
In that case, 4 mins slower in a 5k is a ton needless to say. That should be the pace of a moderate training run. So it's either physical (low iron, injury, something else) or mental. On the latter, how are you with pre-race and race anxiety? I've seen tons of kids completely cr@p out in races because they were so stressed out about the race. The mental energy ends up feeling physical: "Coach, my legs were totally dead. I just couldn't move them." I have even seen runners fall during races when it was mental stress/anxiety. Famously, Jenny Barringer Simpson did exactly that in the NCAA XC Championship that she was the overwhelming favorite to win.
And yet it felt harder than my PR??!? Like I literally was jogging up most of the hills. It was horrible.
I doubt my iron is low. I'm eating well. The only thing is I got 1-2 hours of sleep 2 nights before the race because I literally could not fall asleep. So what the heck happened?
If this really happened, then I'm assuming (or you wouldn't have asked the question) that you're at roughly the same level of fitness based on recents races/workouts and there wasn't some unusual external factor like crazy weather or a crazy tough course.
In that case, 4 mins slower in a 5k is a ton needless to say. That should be the pace of a moderate training run. So it's either physical (low iron, injury, something else) or mental. On the latter, how are you with pre-race and race anxiety? I've seen tons of kids completely cr@p out in races because they were so stressed out about the race. The mental energy ends up feeling physical: "Coach, my legs were totally dead. I just couldn't move them." I have even seen runners fall during races when it was mental stress/anxiety. Famously, Jenny Barringer Simpson did exactly that in the NCAA XC Championship that she was the overwhelming favorite to win.
Yeah, unfortunately this really happened. I was having good workouts and was sleeping well until 2 nights before when I couldn't sleep. The race started and I just didn't feel any adrenaline whatsoever. I was already gassed by the first 800m and I come through the first mile dying ~25 seconds slower than I normally do. I was practically jogging up all the hills, just trying to finish. I mean, yeah I'm sure I could have pushed harder at the end if it was going well for me, just mentally I was so tired. My heart rate was also extremely high during the race, much higher than normal races when I'm actually racing well and pushing myself super hard.
If in school there are plenty of little viruses that go around (not COVID) that can drain your energy unknowingly. just when you want to respond for a race, the body’s baseline is too fatigued to respond. it can also be from cortisol levels surging to fight a small infection or stress. Then when race time comes around you’re drained. just keep putting in the training and you’ll be fine. Unless it’s leukemia. even then you’ll be fine, just takes longer.
Running 4 MINUTES off your 5k PR it seems like you just quit. I could not sleep or eat for a week and run within 4 minutes of my 5k PR
Could also be severely overtrained combined with accumulated stress from poor sleep, have a virus or post-viral illness like chronic fatigue syndrome, covid or long covid. When I got chronic fatigue in my early 20s, I went from being able to run 2 miles under 9 minutes in a workout to needing to walk within a mile of starting runs.
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