Marathon Training, Listen to Your Body and The Importance of Sleep for Athletic Performance

Hey, what's up guys? It's Floris from Extramileist, and today I want to talk about the importance of listening to your body and about the importance of sleep as well, because they go hand in hand. Some days you might notice that your runs are going really well and your workouts go very smooth, and the perception of everything is that it goes well. It kind of feels like you're running with wind in the back, even though you might not have wind in the back. And other days it might all seem like a struggle. You might feel that it's hard to get your shoes on, it's hard to get out of the door, and even once you're moving, it's just not really going the way it is. Well, that kind of happened to me this week as well. I ran a sub-3-hour marathon 5 weeks ago, and for some reason— I had a pretty good recovery, took it easy, then wanted to start picking it up again. And I've just been feeling quite sluggish. And last weekend I went on an 11-mile run and fell very hard on my leg. You can still probably see a little scab going on over there. Leg has been kind of bugging me this weekend, or this whole week. Tried to go on a 20-miler on Sunday and that really didn't go according to plan. I can partly blame my leg, but partly I was just mentally not really there. I think it also has to do with sleep. And so I was already hesitating, shall I still run the Long Beach Marathon that I have coming up in 8 days, or shall I pull out? And I was kind of on the fence. Then this morning I went for a surf session, and one of the first waves I caught, I actually fell forward, fell flat with my head on the water, and my ear popped. It was one of those, and I ended up kind of being out of balance. Just went to the doctor over here, and she told me now my ear is infected and I have to go on antibiotics. So that was kind of the final straw for me, and it also showed me the importance of you can't keep pushing yourself. This is probably why I really like only running 2 or 3 races a year. Of real focused races. I signed up for the Long Beach Marathon a year ago, or almost a year ago, and decided that's going to be my qualifier for Boston 2018. And then I realized that I will actually just miss the cutoff because it's in October. So then last minute I signed up for a September marathon and ended up running that one. Now, 6 weeks in between 2 marathons is far from ideal. I really think you have to go through a proper training cycle. For me now, with a combination of my leg being not optimal and also my ear not being the way it should be, I'm, I'm definitely pulling out of that race and just going to give myself some time to recover, rest up a little, and also get some sleep. I've definitely noticed in the last several weeks I've not been sleeping much. It's been busy at work. I've been working on some extra mileage projects. I've been spending more and more time with the kids and the family. And then before you know it, you're only sleeping 5, 6 hours a night. And doing that consistently for a longer period of time, you're starting to decrease your overall performance. And I've been reading up more and more about the importance of sleep lately. And like 7 to 9 hours is definitely recommended. For athletes putting in higher training weeks, you absolutely need more time to recover. And you need the deep sleep, which often doesn't happen much until later cycles in your sleep. So yeah, I'm going to be a little less hard on myself and try to pull out of this race. And that's all good. I feel okay about that decision. And then get some more sleep and then slowly start building up the miles again. I have Boston 2018 coming up. There's the marathon. It'll be an exciting race. I might do something in January that I'm looking at, possibly doing the Avalon 50-mile ultra, but I haven't decided yet if that's something I fully want to go for. So I want to go back to listening to your body for a little bit. So when you're running and you're starting to feel some of that, if you're kind of out of it, and that is totally normal, I have the same thing. If that happens for an extended period of time, definitely start to look at what are some of these factors that might impact that. Is that the lack of sleep? Is it your nutrition? Could it be additional stress? What else? There could be so many different things. Like the temperatures are changing right now. Sometimes it's very hot, sometimes it's less. Your conditioning, how far along in training cycle are you? How much training volume are you at? What is your intensity? How have you built it up? Have you built it up for more than 10% per week, or are you actually gradually building it up, and do you do enough step-back weeks as well? Once, once again, I've noticed the importance of rest and recovery, and so many athletes underestimate that part, and I'm one of those athletes as well. So I'm going to be focusing more on the rest and recovery as well. On the other hand, you have to put in your miles as well, so it's sometimes a bit of a fine line when, when you have a lot of things going on, but it is is an important element of the training cycle. I started working on a post this week and started writing and writing, and then I just honestly didn't get a chance to finish it. So this is my one and only post for this week. It's going to be my Saturday post. I'm trying to continue posting on Saturday. I'm honestly a little bit out of it, and some days that happens. Rest, recovery, sleep, and not being too hard on yourself either. We are all doing this for fun. At the end of the day, if you're not having fun going through the training cycles, then you're doing it wrong. And that's why I'm gonna continue to listen to the body, and absolutely feel you should do as well. So when I talk about listen to the body, there's obviously many different ways that you can do it, but I often just ask myself whether I'm running or even outside of running, like, how am I currently feeling? I'm trying to do that a few times during the day. How do I feel within? Do I feel everything is in line? Is my body and mind in line? Do I have positive energy going around? If you surround yourself with a lot of negative people, that really impacts how you feel. And sometimes I go through cycles as well that I feel very positive, and other times I feel very negative. And there's a few different aspects that impact that, absolutely. That can be who you surround yourself with, how much stress you have in your personal and work life, your nutrition, your amount of sleep that you're getting. There's so many different factors, but when things feel out of line, not just for one run but for multiple runs and for multiple days, then it's definitely time to analyze and Just take a step back for a second. Hey, what's going on? How can you possibly fix what's going on? And then from there on you can continue. Don't be too hard on yourself either. I see a lot of athletes trying to stick with training schedules, very rigid, and that's one thing I try not to do these days. When I feel I need a rest day, I take a rest day. And you'll do more good with that than you will putting in a hard workout when you feel shit. However, that being said, you also want to put in your workouts, and sometimes you want to push through some uncomfortable situations. And I tried to do that last Sunday. Last Sunday I was tired and my leg was hurting. I fell on a trail run on Saturday, last Saturday, and then tried to go on a 20-mile run on Sunday. And I felt uncomfortable. A few miles in, I started feeling uncomfortable, and I almost called an Uber. I almost called my wife to pick me up after I was halfway done because I had a 10-mile back home. And I decided, let's just slow down the pace, just throw pace out of the window and just jog it back slowly. That was more to train my mind for a little bit, because I think especially in marathon and ultra training Training the mind is such an important part of this all as well. So I just tried to do that. And eventually I made it back home. But the next few days I was definitely out of it for a little bit. Going over to CVS right now to get some antibiotics. And hopefully the infection in my ear will go away soon. And then, yeah, I can start exercising again. Anyways, a little bit of a different video this week. Sorry to sound like Debbie Downer over here. But everyone has their ups and downs. This was one of those for me this week, and I just want to share that with you as well because I can share all these great running videos, but I also have my ups and downs. This is definitely one of those, but we listen to the body and we'll be, we'll be back stronger for the next one again. So thank you guys for watching and take care. Have a good one. Bye.