Severely overtrained with 4 weeks left- what should I do?

Run more, run till your legs are numb. You aren't overtrained. You're just being a pansy.

Just focus on JOGGING comfortably and no hard running at all other than some strides after runs to stay sharp. That’s it!

This has happened to me. Be patient and have confidence that you’re in shape even though it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.

Resist the urge to run hard for 2-3 weeks, then reassess.

Sounds like you're just adjusting to mileage still.

Trust me. I'm overtrained right now. You'll know when you're overtrained: easily get sick, zero motivation to train, easily getting hurt, zero personality, performance simply plummeting.

Happened to me at 50mpw. Again at bump to 60 to 70mpw. I cut back to 50 for a week.

If your legs are totally stiff and off, you're pounding too much. Take a cut bad week. Or go full speed ahead and get a femoral stress fracture.

Make sure your doing your easy days easy, im talking no faster than your 3200 time +2 minutes or mile time +2:30. Do 100m strides on easy days at about mile pace with a full minute walk rest

ferritin level?

Something like that just happened to me, I recently bumped to somewhere around 50-60 miles a week during 3 weeks.

the 4th week I almost collapsed and did like 18 miles and thats it. Felt tired, angry, sored, slow.

Now I am back and feel stronger.

Just take a lower milage week, JOGGING , that is aerobic EASY jogs. Drink some beet root juice (home made no supermarket crap) and relax a bit, maybe swim, you will be stronger. Just after that week jog/easy slow jogs 80% of your miles.

This happened to me when I jumped from 7 miles a week to 9 miles a week.

Just suck it up bro, this sport isn't for the lazy.

https://i.giphy.com/R1WSlTDjU71wk.gif

You need to cut your mileage way back for 1-2 weeks. If you are getting towards the end of your season I assume you will be tapering for conference anyway. If you are feeling that bad and running slower then you need to cut back now. You can then build your mileage back up after track season and over the summer to get ready for cross country.

It's not uncommon to feel a bit fatigued at this point in your season. Its likely you are hitting your highest mileage and tough workouts before your team begins post season, championship series. You coach will most likely begin cutting you back as your near your goal races. When you cut back your legs will feel better and adapt from the cumulative fatigue that you have built over the season.

There are a lot of teams and athletes who race ever meet like its the most important, they peak in the middle of season and can't compete when other teams have recovered from intense training and are fresh from a well laid out taper. At this point keep you easy pace, easy and make sure you are getting good rest , well hydrated, and quality nutrition to help you until your begin your cut back.

I can relate to this as I was running 800 m races hardly at my 1500 m pr pace. I constantly felt bad in all my runs even if they were very easy. I contribute this factor to too many track workouts and running my track workouts too fast. Since then I have taken two weeks off and am slowly building my mileage back up with just easy runs and strides. I have done one tempo and felt amazing on it. The pace I ran the tempo at was faster than the pace I ran my tempos at even when I was in good shape. If I were you I'd probably take a break or cut the mileage down a bit and just do easy running. You will often be surprised with how fit you actually are after a two or even three week break.

Sounds to me like you are anemic. Pop some iron suppies and keep training. Give it 10-14 days and you will be good.

That burning you feel might be a yeast infection that has spread. Are your breasts tender, too?

Happened to my kid his HS Junior year about a month before the State meet. In hindsight, his 1600M time got stuck before that, but then ticked up a few seconds and the second lap of his 800M got rough. Finally backed him off to easy running and strides with only really short intervals (and very little of that). He ended up hitting a PR in his leg of the 4X8 at the State Meet. Should have been a top 10 finisher in the 1600 at States, but failed to qualify.

I'd back off the volume a bit, keep the easy days EASY and go by feel on interval work. If you are feeling stale in the training with four weeks to go, it's likely racing will not go the way you want.

Tired legs is a reality in terms of the standard training cycle, but stale legs is a real thing. Easy to see it happening in younger runners who are chasing performances that may be just a tad bit beyond their reach. Experimenting with a substantial upping of the mileage is best left to off-season/summer training. Hopefully the situation here is just a need for a little freshening.

The summer before my kid went to college, I was surprised that his weekly volume wasn't greater. But now having been through things for a few years, I understand that his coach just wanted him at August camp in shape and fresh, as opposed to injured or burned out. Plenty of time to up the mileage after he saw how the kid reacted to next level training.

Sounds like you have low iron levels. You can get iron supplements at any cvs or walgreens.

Not enough information here to figure out exactly what is going on. But there are two possibilities:

A) The workouts and/or "easy" runs are too fast.

B) There is a health issue of some kinds that might not even be connected to the training or if it is connected, the connection is rather indirect.

My approach is that when faced with the inability to handle the training load, apply the following lines of defense in this order:

- Improve your recovery - diet/sleep/de-stress your life.

- Slow down the easy runs.

- Decrease the intensity and/or volume of the workouts

- If all else fails, cut the mileage by reducing the length of each run (not by training fewer days).

Please do not listen to those who are urging you to ignore what your body is saying - or worse. I had overtraining syndrome, didn't pay attention to the signs, and it ended my career. My best advice would be to stop aerobic activity. Increasing oxidative stress will not help you, despite conventional wisdom. Consider taking 1,000mcg of sublingual methylB-12 between your cheek and gums at night. Eat almonds and bananas to increase the potassium available to your cells in conjunction. If you must run, do these two things anyway and hope it does the trick anyway.

There is no reason to suspect low iron, just because you run. Low iron is a sign of more systemic problems.

Good luck.

LDoc wrote:

Please do not listen to those who are urging you to ignore what your body is saying - or worse. I had overtraining syndrome, didn't pay attention to the signs, and it ended my career. My best advice would be to stop aerobic activity. Increasing oxidative stress will not help you, despite conventional wisdom. Consider taking 1,000mcg of sublingual methylB-12 between your cheek and gums at night. Eat almonds and bananas to increase the potassium available to your cells in conjunction. If you must run, do these two things anyway and hope it does the trick anyway.

There is no reason to suspect low iron, just because you run. Low iron is a sign of more systemic problems.

Good luck.

They probably think you have low iron cause of the burning sensation you mentioned in your legs. I like LDoc's nutrition advice but as for totally backing off that doesn't make sense. You arent gonna do serious damage at 50mpw. Take iron supplements they make a world of difference.