Saturday, August 13, 2011

Overtraining?

I may be overtraining right now, which is really not optimal, as I have a half marathon in three weeks, the Twin Cities Marathon in seven weeks and the WDW Marathon in January. I've never run so many races in one year as this year and I'm wondering if I was too ambitious with this race schedule.

Counting from January 2011 to January 2012, I have run or plan to run:

January 2011 - Goofy Challenge + Disney 5k
April 2011 - Get in Gear Half-Marathon
June 2011 - Minneapolis Half-Marathon
September 2011 - Disneyland Half-Marathon
October 2011- Twin Cities Marathon
January 2012 - WDW Marathon

Now, for some runners, that's not a busy race schedule, but for me, that's about double the number of races I normally run. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited that I can run that many races, but having not trained for that many races before, I'm not sure if my training plan is appropriate.

I don't have the aches and pains I had last year as I lost weight, but I've noticed that a few of my long runs the last several weeks have not felt as strong or as good as earlier this summer. I don't think it's the heat and humidity (although those are contributing factors), but general wear and tear that I am not used to. I do think that my better consistency in doing core work has helped, as has keeping the weight off. I'm open to suggestions and thoughts about training more heavily than normal. I'd like to end this race cycle with some PRs and a good feeling going into next year's races.


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