Never change a winning game

And don't ever suppress your inner compass...

For the last three months I have been doing the opposite of what I was preaching during the whole last year. Why?? Heaven only knows... I wanted to try something new. As a result I ended up wearing myself down, and not getting enough recovery for at least two months. Now I realize that I won't able to run Bergen City half marathon next week...

It all started so well. 2017 turned out to be the year of my best performances ever. Thanks to deep conversations with and great advice from my friend Mats (whom I miss so much!!!), I had a great winter training season with quickly improving form. The recipe was reconfirmed by our test coach Dag: all running should happen either in zone 1 or in lactate threshold zone, nothing in between! That resulted in my best performances ever in every course last year.  Six half marathons in total:  1:56 in Fana in April, 1:57 in the hilly Bergen City a month later, 2:48 in the mountains in June, 1:53 in Tromsø later in June, 1:54 in Trondheim in September, and finally 1:52 and current overall PR in Oxford in October. And in between, a PR of 14:05 at Stoltzekleiven.  I had the recipe! It was working!! And I ruined it all by completely changing the game...

Why? After Oxford came a period of quite a lot of travels and rest, followed by an unusually cold winter with a lot of snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. At the same time, I was losing a little bit of motivation after all the achievements of last year: "Am I now simply going to repeat it all?". On top of all this, it was a busy period with family visits, celebrations, and significant changes concerning work. I was not being very disciplined in my training, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a strict training program to stick to. In January I entered a program which I ad read a lot about and many people had a lot of success with. On the background of my performances so far, it instructed five days of running every week: two interval sessions, two moderate runs, and one long slow run. Nothing special so far; this was anyway more or less the amount I was running before. However, the speed of the runs were quite different from my previous regime. The intervals were slower than my previous intervals and the moderate runs were faster than my previous zone 1 runs. I think those moderate runs were what "killed" me. They were easy enough to perform, but not slow enough for recovery.

It is hard to imagine that someone at my level, with a program that on paper looks pretty moderate and reasonable, can actually end up becoming overtrained, but I am afraid this is exactly what happened. I know it might sound ridiculous, and that's also exactly why I never thought of this option on the way, until my body stopped functioning. In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. I was simply too dedicated in following the plan. I never missed a single run. I did it early in the morning if I knew I would be busy in the evening. I did several in a row if I were going away for the weekend, sometimes two per day. I  also had two hard strength training sessions every week. My legs were tired and stiff most of the time, but I was able to conduct everything as planned, and that gave a certain feeling of achievement and satisfaction. There were clear signs, though, that I should have taken more seriously. I could see that my heart increased over time, when the pace was the same. Also my resting heart rate has been increasing steadily. I was somewhat worried about all this, but I comforted myself thinking that all this was simply about getting adjusted to the new regime...

The first serious sign came during Easter. I did a hard interval session in the morning, before leaving for the mountains for the Easter, which went well. Then came several days of skiing, and that all went in pleasant pace. But during one of the longest skiing sessions I felt really exhausted already from the start and did not really feel well throughout the entire day. It was strange, since we weren't going fast at all. Even Frank got worried and suggested that perhaps I should see my doctor. But I thought I was just having a bad day. Right after Easter, another hard interval session. Then a couple of days rest before a half marathon in Fana, just outside of Bergen, two weeks ago... I ended up not finishing that half, my first DNF ever. My heart rate was high, my speed low, my legs heavy. After this, I started to do some serious thinking. I had to quit the plan and take a couple of days off. I was feeling down, and to regain the joy of training I went running with friends just for the fun of it. A short (200 m) relay race and a great hike to Stoltzekleiven just last week felt really good. So I thought I was over the though days. So I just had a little too much training and a little too little recovery. Nothing that cannot be fixed with a couple of days taking it easy! Well, unfortunately it turned out not so. Although Stoltzekleiven was great and I felt wonderful, the next three days I could not take a single step. It was a wonderful sunny weekend, but I stayed at home the entire time, mostly sleeping. My body would simply refuse to do anything straining, and I listed to it and let it be.

Then came Monday and I felt ready and fresh again, and eager to train. Still I wanted to be cautious, so went for just a slow run with friends. Although I was at the back line with a friend who had completed a 10 hour ultra race a couple of days earlier, and we were going really slow, it still felt though and my legs were stiff already from the start. How could this be? After three whole days of rest?? I realized that it was time to seriously figure out what this was. I was at the doctor's and got everything checked that can be checked with blood tests. According to the results, there is no lack of anything that can explain this very strange behavior of my body. Then I started to Google the symptoms, and came to the conclusion that I simply got no recovery at all during the past two, three months. This lead to the situation I am in now, which cannot be repaired by just taking off  two or three days from running, or by simply taking it easy.

What now? Well, nothing, simply nothing. No running, biking, rowing, swimming or strength training for at least a week. Then, wait until the resting heart rate comes down to normal. Hopefully, I managed to catch this early enough that I won't need a very long time for recovery. (In bad cases it can take a year to recover, but I hope that only applies to serious athletes training much much more.) Then I will start very cautiously with very slow short runs. And then I will take it from there. And for sure, whenever I am ready, I will go back to my winning game: everything either in zone 1 or in threshold zone. Nothing in between!

On the other hand, if you never try, you will never know....