Two years ago, I was at the high water mark of my running career. Now as I sit here, feeling generally crappy, unmotivated, frustrated and in a bit of an existential crisis re: running, I looked back and wonder where and how it went wrong. Something I'll probably never know the answer to, but all the same, it's worth taking a look back to see if the puzzle pieces can be fitted together in a way that makes sense in hindsight.
January 2016: I came off a career year in 2015, PRing in the 5k, 10k, and running my second-best ever 1500 and half marathon. Missing the OTQ on Halloween 2015 pushed me towards greater heights, capped off by running 1:04 in Jacksonville on Jan 3. That truly was the best race of my life both in the quality of the performance and how it felt. To be able to coach myself, working full time, to that level is something special that I'll treasure for the rest of my life.
February 2016: DNF at the OT marathon. Not a big deal - making it here was the surprise. Unprepared both for the conditions and for the distance itself, I bailed when it became obvious a death march was coming up fast. A week after I won MD Club Challenge.
Spring 2016: Ran a few good races here, basically just maintaining fitness from January/February. Cherry Blossom and Broad Street were the big ones, and I PR'd at BSR by six seconds which was nice. Still though, in hindsight I can already see that I'm just hanging on to fitness, even as I kept racing I was unable to achieve the level I was at late 2015-Jax Bank.
Summer-Fall 2016: This is where I really started to pay back the debts I incurred on my body throughout the previous 18 months, starting in September. I was training probably the hardest I've ever training for the marathon throughout the summer, and then was struck down with a series of fevers over a two month span that crippled my training. I still have no scientific explanation of these; my best guess is a kooky holistic one that amounts to "my body had enough and I was overdoing it, so this was its way of forcing me to stop". With no other symptoms of sickness besides a wacky all-over-the-place core temp I do not think it was actual illness from a pathogen or virus. A similar thing happened in fall 2013 when my thyroid freaked out for 6 weeks for seemingly no reason.
Winter 2016: I started building back up and was soon training well. Good volume, decent and consistent workouts and overall good feelings motivated me to sign up for some big spring races. I thought I was back on track and ready to resume high-level racing.
Spring 2017: My three big races did not go as planned. NYC Half, Cherry Blossom and Pittsburgh half all sucked and were well below my expectation. Worse, I was training well leading up and had no real explanation why I wasn't able to race better. Worse still, I was actually getting slower in each race. After Pittsburgh I was bitterly disappointed and unsure how to get back on track. At least at this point, I was still enjoying running and looking forward to a bit of a break before refocusing and getting back into it in the fall.
Fall 2017: After an easy summer, I set a goal to try and run decently well at Philly half in November. That was plenty of time to get back in good shape, and I found myself putting in typical workouts all fall with good volume backing them up. Alas another shitty race and disappointment at Philly, objectively an even worse performance than in the spring.
Winter 2017-18: Back to training well, but early in 2018 I got sick and have been having an awful time running ever since. It's been about 6 weeks now that I have felt bad on basically every run, in a way that I've never had before. If burnout is a real thing, this is it. I feel bad physically, but much worse is that I just want to quit all the time when I'm running. I just don't care about it at all and know it makes no difference, because I'm stuck in such a rut it doesn't matter if I run a little harder or longer. Once this club challenge is done with - if I can even force myself through it - I'll need to do a pattern break. Maybe join a gym for a trial membership and start hitting the weights. Maybe I'll keep up casually running 50 miles a week or something. Regardless, something's got to change because I am so deep in a rut I can't even see out of it right now.
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