Crazy Men and Ducklings

I've found out that there is one thing that you shouldn't do while recovering from overtraining syndrome (apart from obssessive, excessive exercise of course). The most important thing you can avoid while you're recovering is reading inspirational biographies. I've just finished Dean Karnazes 50 Marathons in 50 Days. Big mistake! All it's made me do is want to run. I want to run hard and long and often and all I'm allowed to do is moderate and short and not-as-often-as-I'd-like.

I'm not saying that I want to emulate what DK has done. Personally I think there's a high degree of crazy in his make-up. And I think he has an amazing physiology for his body to cope with the torture that he chooses to inflict on it. But all runners have some degree of crazy in them. We subject our body to enormous degrees of discomfort (and discomfort is an understatement) and manage to get satisfaction and, sometimes, pleasure from the pain. Nuts, huh?!

Sam, my newly accredited exercise physiologist son, has told me that it'll take AT LEAST SIX MONTHS and to be patient. Easy for him to say. It's been three and a half months without seeing the improvement I'd have liked to see.

I spent a little time on-line researching again yesterday and found out that overtraining syndrome has another name - Unexpected underperformance syndrome. I stumbled on another sufferer's blog and he recommended magnesium citrate. So today I went out and bought myself a tub of special powder which I hope will be a magic bullet. Finger's crossed.

Speed session today was tough. A 1k time trial (not liking these in my less-than-speedy state), 200 and 100m reps with the same distance recovery and another 1k thrown in for good measure. The aim was to get your 1k's as close in time as possible. It was a miserable fail for that - my first was 4:16 and the second was 4:39 - but I did give it all I had. On the plus side I actually got faster in the 200s and 100s as the session went on. And on the plus-plus side we saw a cute duck family (mummy and 12 ducklings) on our cool-down run.