Jennifer!
These are such great questions. I am so glad you found the articles interesting, and you are starting to understand water vs. sand. Each one of the training programs for FUA starts to add in some intensity slowly, so I would say for now, just stick to the program. I know that it is hard to be patient but getting more sand, the better 🙂
If you are truly self-coaching, I would spend more time reading up on training theory and practice; I don’t have a one size fits all answer because it depends so much on your background and your goal. If you are running a marathon, you will use different intensity than if you are training for a mountain climb. You can’t really have too much base training, so I recommend trying to get in as much of it as possible before going into an intensity block. Again depending on your goal it is important to have some intensity before a big event but sometimes you need no more than a month of harder effort to get you ready.
As or overtraining vs undertraining. I would take being undertrained ANY day of the week over overtrained. I tell every single athlete I have worked with that if you go into an event undertrained but well rested, your mental strength and what you have trained will take you farther than you know. If you go in overtrained, it won’t matter how mentally tough you are; your body just won’t be able to do what it needs to. Also, there are serious lifelong health effects of being seriously overtrained that I am terrified of as both a coach and athlete.
Coaching yourself is hard-that is why Carolyn and I have jobs 🙂 Listen to your body as much as you can, even if it means shutting off your brain and ignoring the training plan from time to time.
We will talk about this and goals in a future zoom so bring it up again if you have questions or want to discuss more!
