Thursday 8 May 2008

Overtraining

Posted by speedygeoff on Thursday, May 08, 2008 with
Speedygeese Runners at North Lyneham Saturday 3 May. 6.2k.
50. Thea Zimpel 29:48
57. Neil Boden M55 30:59
59. Charlie McCormack W40 31:27
64. Roger Pilkington M45 32:27
69 finishers

Women's Jogalong 4 May. 6k.
Amanda Walker W40 28:08
Helen Larmour W45 27:55
Gabrielle Brown W40 32:23
Caroline Campbell W65 32:40
180 finishers
Helen's daughter Natalie Larmour (U16) ran 33:02 first up.

Nail Can Hill Albury, 4 May
Kathy Southgate 3rd in the open women & 1st in the W50 in 48:34, a 5 minute W50 record.
Geoff Barker ran 61.26

The Mothers Day Classic, 5k and 10k, is this Sunday; late entries will be taken from 7:30am
See http://www.mothersdayclassic.org/home/event-details/canberra/

Overtraining is worse than undertraining. Much Worse.
I took on an athlete once who had been training with another Canberra group. After discussing their training with them, I realised they were doing too much too fast. On my advice the athlete radically changed their training program and showed vast improvement over the next few months, after being stagnant and flat before that. Name withheld, but this athlete went on to set ACT records, and I am 100% positive this would never have happened if the training had not been modified.

Training To Lose
Some speedygeese are overtraining and over racing! Yes, maybe you, even now! Please seek advice! Don't keep doing speedwork day after day. Have a sensible structured program. Make sure you always schedule a full recovery after every hard race by allowing sufficient number of days to freshen up. One day for every mile of the race! Don't run as far as others do until you have given yourself the months, even years, of gradual adaptation. Read and follow my "Principles of Training"!

Some runners even believe that if a certain amount of training makes them good and fast, twice as much training is twice as good and makes them twice as fast. Or if they don't actually think that, they train as if they do.

Not so!

Train to Win!
These thoughts arose from reading an article on Chinese Athletes overtraining, which is found at http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080507/wl_asia_afp/oly2008chncoaching.

Regional Cross Country


Tomorrow I will be in Shellharbour watching grandchildren Kayleigh (pictured) and Jarod run in their regional cross country races.