When the body and mind are constantly stressed, runners will hurt themselves, lose hormonal balance, and thereby affect everything.
Kieran Abbotts, a PhD student at the University of Oregon studying human physiology, earned his master’s in metabolic and exercise physiology at Colorado State University. He studies how the body’s chemicals work during exercise and what happens when things go wrong.
There are two types of training, Abbotts says. The first is functional overtraining , where the runner stresses the body with hard workouts and long runs, but then gives it enough time to recover and create adaptations. This type of training is ideal for getting your body stronger, making progress while still ensuring adequate recovery.
And then there's dysfunctional overtraining , which may feel similar to many athletes, but is different. "With dysfunctional overtraining, you're essentially doing the same thing—training a lot, stressing your body, but not giving yourself enough time to recover. And then you start to injure yourself," Abbots says, adding that the damage can take a long time to manifest itself, but it will definitely show up.
Dysfunctional overtraining is exactly the same as healthy overtraining, except without adequate rest. And since everyone’s rest needs are different, it’s easy to go from healthy functional overtraining to harmful nonfunctional overtraining without even realizing it. Without adequate rest, your body starts to break down instead of get stronger.
Overtraining without rest will cause runners to burn out. Photo: Women Running
Types of stress
Professional ultrarunner Cat Bradley, 31, who lives in Hawaii, has experienced fatigue and burnout in various forms, including one that occurred right after she won Western States in 2017. Winning a major event is great, Bradley said, but it also means you're in the spotlight and under a lot of pressure to stay on top.
"After winning Western States, I took a month off, but I was still running at a high level. I was training hard and I felt like I had a gun in my back," Bradley said. "I wanted to win Western States so badly, and after I did, a lot of things happened and I never got over that feeling of having a gun in my back. After a while, it got to the point of burnout. I had to take a mental break."
For many athletes, the pursuit of success, or improving performance, can create stress, leading to dysfunctional overtraining. How can you take a long break when you are winning and signing a new sponsorship deal?
The second time Bradley experienced burnout was when she was faced with a particularly stressful situation unrelated to running. The daily emotional stress in her personal life had reached a point where everything else was affected, including her running and training. When you’re under stress, your body doesn’t know, or care, what’s causing it. If there’s stress in your life, everything else needs to adjust. It doesn’t matter if that stress is just work, or illness, or relationships.
When you overtrain or are chronically stressed, your body produces more catecholamines—hormones released by the adrenal glands during times of stress, such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, or adrenaline. “If you have chronically high levels of stimulation and not enough time to recover, you go into a state of desensitization,” Abbott says. “Overstimulation also lowers your cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone and it plays a very important role in your physiology.”
When you exercise or stress your body, cortisol increases to help your body deal with the stress. But if you constantly need more cortisol, your body will eventually regulate it down. It will adapt and then you will have low cortisol levels. This means you have difficulty dealing with physical and mental stress.
In February 2023, Bradley felt another bout of exhaustion, and it hit mid-race, while she was running the Tarawera 100-mile (160 km) Marathon in New Zealand. In addition to training for such a big race, Bradley was working full-time, planning and preparing for her wedding just days after the race. On top of that, traveling to New Zealand for the race was extremely stressful for the runner.
“I was in fourth place, feeling like I could have moved up to third. But at the 85-mile mark, I blacked out and hit my head on a rock,” Bradley said. “We can talk about the reasons why I blacked out, but I really thought my brain had shut down. It was just too much.”
For Bradley, reaching burnout had more to do with external stressors than the actual running itself. Now that she's aware of it, she's working to keep that "gun in the back" feeling at bay by reducing her need to please others and taking care of her body.
Another professional ultrarunner, Sally McRae, says avoiding burnout and overtraining has a lot to do with living a sustainable life. She started working when she was 15, and soon realized that life wasn’t all about working as hard as possible while counting down to retirement.
Emotional stress in life can also cause runners to burn out during training. Photo: Women Running
“Context is so important with burnout,” McRae says. “My goal every year is to find the magic and the beauty and the joy in what I do. Because it’s my job, but it’s also my life. And I really believe that we need to take breaks, it needs to be a normal part of our lives. Whether that’s taking a vacation or just taking a regular break at home.”
One of the most important parts of resting and not stressing your body too much is to remind yourself that everyone is different. Too much stress can lead to hormonal imbalances, which can affect everything.
“When you overtrain, you tend to have mood swings and trouble sleeping,” says Abbotts. “Two of the things that stand out are you’re exhausted but can’t sleep. And the other is irritability—mood swings and depression.” When you stress your body for so long that the chemistry changes, pretty much everything starts to fall apart.
You also never see a person's full background on social media. "I know social media makes ultrarunners look like they're running 40 miles every day, doing 100 miles every weekend," McRae says. "And that's crazy. You have to listen to your body." Runners need to rest when they wake up and don't feel like they're doing the work, as well as when they wake up and feel sore or tired.
How to fix
Elite ultrarunner and running coach Sandi Nypaver wants runners to pay more attention to how they feel and less attention to numbers or what other people are doing.
“I have to have honest conversations with my players,” Nypaver says. “I need them to feel like they can tell me how they’re feeling, because sometimes they think they have to stick to the training plan for the week no matter what. But plans are never set in stone, and can be adjusted based on how you’re feeling. Some weeks you might feel great and not need to change anything, while other weeks you might have to break the plan and do something else.”
Even at the highest levels, training and recovery are different for everyone, Nypaver says. “One thing that’s really hard for a lot of runners to understand is that even if you’re not sore anymore, you’re not recovered. There’s a lot of research that shows that things are still happening in your body up to four weeks after certain races, depending on the distance.”
Sometimes it can be hard to tell when the pain is gone. Convincing runners that they need to take it easy, even that the pain is gone, can be really hard. But after a hard workout and before the next workout, runners rarely end up saying things like, “I really wish I hadn’t rested so much.” Part of training is recovery.
Coach Nypaver takes a break. According to her, rest is also an important part of the athletes' training process. Photo: Instagram / sandinypaver
"And, really, just relax. Enjoy yourself. We live in a culture where we're always being told to do more," Nypaver says. "I wish we would just focus on ourselves instead of always thinking about doing more. A lot of us want to be more relaxed, less stressed, happier, and enjoy life. We need to focus on that instead of trying to do too much. That's something I've always struggled with."
When you reach a state of exhaustion after a long period of nonfunctional overtraining, a long period of rest is the only way your body can repair and heal itself. “Once you’ve overtrained, you need to stop training,” Abbotts emphasizes. “Some people can significantly reduce their training volume. You need a long period of rest.”
There is nothing sexy about rest. There is no bonus in relaxation. But it is the absolutely vital ingredient in sustained performance and in a much healthier, happier life.
Hong Duy (according to Outside )
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