[Agalliers]

Hi,

I was just wanting to get people’s views on how they judge how hard to push training once race date is approaching. As I’m not sure how to proceed. I apologise now for the essay.

I have my first skyrace the first weekend of October, it’s fairly short only 24miles with 3,000m of ascent around Snowdonia (u.k). I’ve been following the training plan in UA (I had to adjust a little for work commitments) for 1st time 50km and it’s been going really well until recently.

As a bit of background I have a fairly physical job working with and galloping racehorses which involves me being on the go for at least 8hrs a day.

My last really good back to back weekend was 7/8 August and I did back to back 30km runs and felt really strong and good. Then I had an easy week and the following week was going well and Saturdays 30km went well but I totally crashed on the Sunday 22 Aug, and only made it 13Km before I and to head back to the car as I was done. When I got home I just fell straight to sleep.

So I decided as I was a bit ahead of the programme to give myself another easy week but now moving into this week I still feel very tired and like I have no energy even after a week off.

However this is scheduled to be my final big volume week before tapering (I’m working all through next weekend so can’t push it back another week). So should I just push through and get it done as then I’ll have 3 weekends to recover before the race or at this stage is it better to just listen to my body and do what I can as I’m on the move with my job all day anyway.

I know this is a very personal question to me and my training but I’d be really interested to know if other people have been in similar situations and what they’ve decided to do and the pros and cons.

Many thanks

Topic

[TerryLui]

TerryLui on August 30, 2021 at 5:08 pm #56660

So I decided as I was a bit ahead of the programme to give myself another easy week but now moving into this week I still feel very tired and like I have no energy even after a week off.

Big red flag here. Sounds like you may have pushed into some over training.

listen to my body and do what I can

I would say listen to your body very closely, do recovery/taper workouts. You may be too far over the edge to build anymore with the potential that you over did it.

Overtraining Syndrome: The Elephant in the Ultrarunning Room

I overtrained(?) What now?

Good luck!

[Agalliers]

Agalliers on September 1, 2021 at 10:34 pm #56712

Hi Terry

Thanks for the reply and it makes perfect sense so I will stick to recovery/taper workouts until the big day.

Thanks again for your advice really appreciate it.

[merrindenny]

merrindenny on November 17, 2021 at 1:52 am #59410

I’m a newbie, but I’m motivated on working out too, thanks for your posts really helped me.

[Aaron]

Aaron on November 30, 2021 at 3:44 pm #60124

Google ‘Science of Ultra Tapering Scott Trappe’, good episode.

[Jane Mackay]

Jane Mackay on December 1, 2021 at 6:53 am #60146

Aaron, that’s a great episode! I found it very helpful when I was tapering for my first event, a 32k run in the alps, this Sept. One of my big takeaways was that thanks to his work particularly with astronauts, he has moved more and more towards more recovery time, his studies having shown that the benefits of training, including strength training, last far longer than we think. The episode is from 2015, but the overarching message of ‘less is better than more’ seems to be really hard to take on board…

[Mariner_9]

Mariner_9 on December 1, 2021 at 7:26 am #60147

I found the Inigo Mujika episode on tapering to be useful: https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/127