Burnt Out Athlete

In all honesty she might need more than a week off. Since championship season is coming up though that's not feasible. Talk to her parents and see if they'll take her to get her ferritinferritin levels checked. She could have low iron.

Be gentle with your runner and positive. Though it's probably not a good time to have an I told you so moment, remind her that more is not always better in the future. Rest is just as important as training.

Also, if it helps, you can tell her a lot of people go through burn out periods and come back better in future seasons. It may seem like the end of the world to have a bad season but if she is willing to work hard and smart in the future it's not over (trust me, I'm a college girl who burnt out a few times and came back stronger when it counted down the road). Best of luck to your runner. I hope it all gets better and she comes back around!

Have her thyroid levels checked along with the iron levels.

Some suggestions, on top of the health suggestions:

1) Make sure she isn't running any garbage miles. What's the point of the "7 mile run without too much strain?" For a miler, she's either running those 7 miles very slow, or not at all. Use intervals or a tempo run if you're trying to achieve a workout. A 7 mile steady hard run is garbage for a miler.

2) 1 weekend off isn't ideal. Either get her on complete rest for a week if she is really burnt out, or slow everything down in training. Especially the garbage distance runs.

3) If you're worried about fitness levels, you can maintain and perhaps even improve her fitness if you focus on having her do just 1 or even 2 actual workouts each week (shorter intervals for the time being, increase if she responds well, so maybe start fresh with 400m and build up to 800m again if she's up to it) and maybe a hard tempo run of around 3 miles. I would limit these to 2-3 a week max. The rest of the days, have her literally jog maybe 4-6 miles at a time at 8:30 pace.

4) Make sure she's not dieting. Weight isn't that important for a miler, so make sure she's eating healthy.

Not just a miler, runs xc and racing 2 mile this weekend. It was more of a 7 mile progression run.

We'll just have to slow everything down. Only a few meets left until districts then state, so not able to really back things down.

Her 5:42 mile actually was pretty impressive though as she unleashed a 34 last 200m and didn't look too fatigued, but it takes her a long time to recover.

She is also very healthy, yet isn't too strict with her diet.

Get her iron checked. I ran through almost a whole season of feeling awful every run just thinking I was burnt out or being a wimp. My coach finally recommended I get my iron checked and it turned out I was anemic. I was eating a balanced diet at the time too.

Get blood work ASAP! Not overtraining, not junk miles. Low ferritin levels!!! Make sure you get a copy of the levels. They should be high end of 'normal.' Ask specifically for ferritin to be checked. Some tests will have 'normal' be as low as 18. This is NOT normal for an athlete, specifically an endurance athlete. She may feel affects of low iron in the 50's. The max number for women is around 150 (nanograms per milliliter). I would predict she is under 20.

Try letting her rub some testosterone cream on her skin. Her gills will really soak it up. Worked well with some of my female athletes.

Maybe rest her until districts? School pride in winning your league or some meaningless dual meet shouldn't come before the health of your athletes.

At a minimum, if I was her coach, I would not have her race the 2mile this weekend. Maybe just have her race the 800m. It will be fun and different for her. If she absolutely must race the 2mile, I would tell her to run it slow as a tempo race, just to get the stress off her mind of having to race and disappointing everyone.

Also, what is a 7 mile "progression" run? Don't try to mix/match/combine different workouts into one. Things like fartleks are garbage unless done in off-season or pre-season to prepare you for the real workouts. Not only is it physiologically inefficient to do so, it is also mentally stressful. It's far easier mentally to have 3 hard days and 4 easy days a week, compared to having 2 hard days and 5 somewhat hard days each week. Not to mention, if you do the 2 hard and 5 somewhat hard days, you're never going to recover and your workouts/races will suffer as a result...

Honestly, it's beginning to sound like you are the problem.

I would definitely rest until absolutely necessary. Last year I busted up my knee during steeple on the first meet of the season and did zero activity for about a week, and did some light swimming and pool running for 2 weeks. first run back was the last meet before districts and ran a 5 6 sec 1500m pr. If she has had good training so far you guys should trust it., imo let her rest until the last moment and she should be fine. or atbe least qualify for the next meet and buy some more time for a good race.

The man's got some super important invitational this weekend in which his tired, burnt out and stressed athlete absolutely must run the 3200m or else the world will collapse. His entire coaching career and team's future depends on this lady being tough and running the 3200m this weekend at all costs.

Lot of options other than iron related. And even if it is anemia

or low storage form iron, doesn't mean iron is the solution per se.

Good runners are not motivated by slow.

If feels better with fartlek you have an important clue.

Running that slow is punishment.

Be honest and tell her the season is over.

I've felt burned out a few times in the past.

Taking a weekend off never had a positive effect on me. Yes, I would feel better for a day or two, but it wouldn't last. Taking a week off might be a bit more effective, but you'll lose a decent amount of fitness.

However, what really worked well for me was reducing my training load to 3-4 times a week and only easy intervals. This might sound counterintuitive at first, but I'm talking about really easy intervals. As a 4:04 miler I would do 2 workouts of 10-12x200 in about 34 seconds, and 2 workouts of 6-8x400 in about 72seconds. For your girl this will probably be around 46 seconds and 96, or even slower. Basically 3k pace and 5-10k pace.

I would often feel like crap when I started the workout (because I was burned out) but by the time I was done I reached the point in which I started to feel good. If you are a runner yourself, you might recognize that feeling. When you feel ready to run fast after a few easier intervals. Only this time, when you reach that point, you are done. Do this for 2 weeks and you lose very little to no fitness, and you feel good again.

Personally, I went from a 3:57 1500 and feeling like crap to a 3:50 and feeling great in 3 weeks of mostly this type of training. A few weeks later I ran a couple seconds faster after going back to my normal training routine.

Even if you don't follow my advice, please make sure your athlete doesn't do any really hard workouts or races for 2 weeks minimum. You could give her a full week off and let her do one race, and she'll just feel like crap again.

Coach,

You really have to be careful with a thread like this. About half of what former D1 writes is wrong but the other half is from someone who has been there. About 90% of what dsrunner writes is trying to over-sell a very important idea. While statements like, "Good runners are not motivated by slow." are garbage, the underlying idea that you need to do some faster work at all times of the year is gold.

While 40 mpw doesn't sound super high, if she wasn't ready for it or it coincided with the wrong phase of her growth or she had an iron or thyroid issue during it or couldn't do it without stopping all work faster than marathon pace, it could lead to this type of regression. It also can have nothing to do with the training AT ALL and just be part of growing up or trouble at home or in class or difficulty sleeping.

Give her time off, and be super relaxed about the bigger meets at the end of the season. Back down the expectations, I'm going counter to most of these posts and bet her "burn out" is more mental than physical.

worriedcoacher wrote:

Sophomore in high school, female. Worked her butt off this winter with 40+ mpw. Able to run 7 miles @ 7:10 pace without too much strain.

Now, she can barely run 4 miles and break 8 min pace. Races aren't going too well and her legs are easily fatigued. She was hoping to be running around 5:20 mile by now but she can't even break 5:40.

One other thought - did this start about the time allergy season did? On high pollen days, this is exactly how I feel. Seasonal allergies don't always manifest as congestion and sneezing. Sometimes it's just that you feel drained.

A good test is: how does she run on days when it's rainy and the pollen is tamped down as a result?

Yeah sounds like overtraining as you seem to realise. Or an illness. Either way, racing this weekend is obviously not a good idea. If the poor girl cannot run at 8 minute pace why are you going to try and put her through a race? Sounds like insanity to me.

She needs as much time off as she needs to feel normal again. There is no other cure for over training other than rest, sleep and good food.

I'm afraid either you or your athlete have blown it by training too hard, now you have two options.

The first is to allow that athlete to recover.

The second is to keep pushing that athlete through a declining performance until they physically can't take it anymore. The consequences of this can be long term.

If you take the first option then you may be lucky and after a week of rest she may bounce back (recover and adapt to the hard training she did previously). In this case, the athlete is unlikely to lose fitness in their week of rest.

If you've already pushed it too far however then the athlete will need more time off to recover and will lose fitness.

worriedcoacher wrote:

Not just a miler, runs xc and racing 2 mile this weekend. It was more of a 7 mile progression run.

We'll just have to slow everything down. Only a few meets left until districts then state, so not able to really back things down.

Her 5:42 mile actually was pretty impressive though as she unleashed a 34 last 200m and didn't look too fatigued, but it takes her a long time to recover.

You absolutely have to 'back things down'.

If you know how training works, you would realise it is unnecessary to train hard in the season when an athlete is racing often. Training her hard the several days leading into a race will not make her run faster that day. Ever heard of tapering?

mono? definitely get her in to see a doctor, I would add a CBC with a differential and a monospot. CBC will look at red cells for changes associated with anemia, not just iron deficiency, and will look at white cells for changes--mono cells are pretty spectacular. hypothyroid less likely in this age group, low iron possible (any pica or low iron eating habits?), so probably want a serum ferritin as well.

everybody has setbacks. have her do half the workouts, half the mileage, no doubling up on races at meets and see if she recovers.

some people are just more low mileage than others and really, she can take every weekend off until she feels better.

part of the problem may be with the huge meets (not real fun) or she may have a very difficult social situation (home, other teens, abuse) that she can't address directly. be kind, be careful.