More and Harder?

Awesome article in the Wall Street Journal today. The article focused mainly on over-50 athletes who struggle to balance their competitiveness and the effects of aging on the body. That need to stay competitive often times leads to overtraining, which leads to increased stress on the body and injury—and I would add that it becomes a vicious circle after a while. Your performance declines as you age; you train as hard as you can to try to fight the decline; you over train and get sick and injured; you train even harder, until you end up a burnt-out mess.

Lots of other good stuff in the article, and a plug for Mark Allen and Brant Secunda’s book, Fit Soul, Fit Body. I’d like to read that.

I have not reached the aforementioned milestone age quite yet, but the article did get me thinking about my own fitness life. This one comment caught my attention in particular:

“A study published last year in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine reinforced other recent research showing that intensity tends to diminish the view of physical activity as pleasant.”

I suppose that it’s a no-brainer: suffering sucks. It hurts. It’s no fun.

It really hit home for me the other day, out for a quick 24 mile ride in the late afternoon. I always seem to be in training for something or another; therefore, I need to push it, to work, to get that lactate threshold up. It was beautiful out in the park- the sun was beginning to set, the air was cooling- and I was in freaking high Zone 3.

I realized that it was getting old, fast—the sufferfest that triathlon training often is. I wanted to slow down, to enjoy the air, to enjoy the feeling of my body in motion. I just wanted the ride to not suck.

I’ve been a triathlete for a number of years now. I have wanted to train hard, to set high goals for myself, to PR, to finish another Ironman, to score an age-group award. But the overuse injuries have begun to creep in, namely, a really bad case of plantar fasciitis. I get really tired of hurting during workouts.

And I think that the hurting leads to burnout. The “view of physical activity as pleasant” is very much diminished.

Here’s my confession: the burnout is beginning in my own life. It’s my own vicious circle: I have a burning need to be competitive. I am not a natural athlete. I have to work my butt off to be competitive. I get injured because I work my butt off. Training starts to suck. I have to back off. It gets even harder to be competitive, because now I’ve gained weight and lost fitness. So I have to work even harder. I get frustrated, and fatigued, and the injuries linger—and the burnout begins.

And, of course, I am a triathlete: you know, “Swim. Bike. Run. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.” This is what I know; this is what I do. Without that structure in my life, and in my fitness, I lose my bearings. And I end up doing a whole lot of nothing.

So there it is. I’m burning out.

But, like every obsessive Type A overachiever triathlete out there—I have a plan. I am going to actually synthesize the points in that article and embark upon a new course of action. Here it is:

1. I am going to take to heart Allen’s credo: “It’s not my day job.”
2. I am going to stop racing and training in pain, and address the overuse injuries.
3. I am going to try to be a participant for a while—not a competitor.
4. I am going to try to branch out from “swim/bike/run”—even if it’s just “swim/mountain bike/trail run.” Hey- it’s a start.
5. When it’s fun again, I will set reasonable triathlon goals for myself, and be competitive to the best of my abilities.

And I’m going to learn to have fun just moving again—belly dancing, hooping, jumping rope with the kids, hiking….

My favorite Nike running shirt says “Walking is not an option.” After careful consideration, I am going to rethink that assertion. Maybe I’ll just put on my running shoes and take a walk, and see what’s going on in the world today.