Why Do I Run/Feel bad on low miles weeks compared to high mile weeks?

well i cant offer you a reason but i can tell you that i expereince the same thing...

As do I, but sometimes I feel more confident because I'm always thinking, "gosh if I can run this well off 90 miles a week, then who knows what'll happen when I drop". But the thing is, once I get down to like 50 miles a week I get mental or something I don't know. I can tell you one thing - it's messed up.

This is a surprisingly common phenomenon, and indicates your training is going well. It also might mean that you don't want to taper too much before important races.

I've also had very similar experiences. Tinman will also tell you that this is a relatively common thing.

Often you find when you start training twice a day the overall quality of your training improves. The engine runs better the more it is used. As soon as you cut back it starts seizing up. I would just be more careful by resting and refueling without cutting back the miles..

I, too, feel worse during my 'recovery' weeks than when going full bore. However, I just got around to reading the article in Running Times re: the Hansons' training plan. If you believe the article, it takes up to 10 days to feel the full effect of workouts. Maybe you're (we're) feeling lame during our downtime as payback for the hard miles put in during the training cycle.

I've been doing this for over 20 years and I'm nowhere near figuring it all out. Let me just suggest that if you are able to resume the hard workouts after feeling crappy during a down week, you're doing OK and should keep after it. Only if you never recover should you back off or extend your recovery periods. Otherwise, keep hammerin' and improvin'.

jaybird was getting close. You should be taking down weeks AFTER you have been training hard and your body should be fatigued. That is why you are tired on your down week. You are then doing a high mileage week RESTED from the easy week. That is why you feel great on your runs then. Nothing mysterious about that.

I have the same experience.

I aim for a "trashed" feeling at all times. If I feel good, I know something is wrong. If I feel significantly sore, then I know I've done too much.

Running can be very ironic sometimes. If I start a run feeling good, I end up feeling like shit at the end. If I start a run feeling bad, I end up feeling great.

Out.

Wow I thought I was the only one who feel this way too. I ran a workout of 3x1600, and got 5:15, 5:14, 5:06, off of 70 MPW, then like 4 weeks later when tapering at 40 MPW, i went 5:29, 5:24, 5:38!

Does anyone have a solution to this?

Hawkeye wrote:

Often you find when you start training twice a day the overall quality of your training improves. The engine runs better the more it is used. As soon as you cut back it starts seizing up. I would just be more careful by resting and refueling without cutting back the miles..

Agreed.

It's possible that if the quantity and quality is reduced by too much during the "easy week" you're body's metabolism and nervous system compenstates, hence your feel crap. I find that bringing the km's down gradually so the body adapts during a taper, that my athletes feel better. I also find , as others have found, that my athlete's struggle through the easy week, possibly due to fatigue after a sucession of hard weeks, but are ok at the beginning of the next week, therefore getting the benefit of the easy week. Again as someone else mentioned, my athletes start to feel the real benefit of a taper after 10 days, hence I make sure mine taper gradually for 10-14 days before a major event. Although the overall volume is reduced, they still do the "speed days" even though the speed work is reduced in volume and intensity, otherwise your nervous system may lose the abilty to neuromuscularly con-ordinate the muscles, thus losing speed and efficiency.

A few years ago I tried a cycle of 4 weeks hard

/one week at 3/4 volume followed by one week half volume, thus gradually reducing volume rather than doing it in "one hit". I found my athletes felt really good and got some of my best results. Due to timing of events it is easier to run with a 3 week hard/1 week easy cycle but I'm willing to re-visit the 4/1/1 cycle. Just a thought.

Your situation is familiar to many runners. Do what works best for you. Just because others taper and have good results doesn't mean it will work for you. Many slow twitch endurance type runners perform best on higher mileage, and peaking simply means reducing the training pace in the last 3-4 days prior to a big race. Tinman

Another thing I don't do in the last few weeks tapering towards a major event is to do anything new. It's a trap alot fall for where some do short, sharp, fast work doing what they feel is "sharpening up". If none/very little of this has been done during the season then (1) body is subjected to a stress it's not used to and (2) you may employ muscles not previously trained, leaving you more flat than sharp.

Tinman,

What about mitochondira levels varying with volume?

i am a slow twitch kinda bloke and in my experiments to try to overcome this problem i have found that; not reducing overall volume and volume of workouts much, but just reducing intensity of workouts (rolling through reps feeling good)works best for me.