The first thing to go

As a physician who is athletic and trains athletes and hangs around athletes at places like the Institute of Human Performance in Boca Raton (www.ihpfit.com) and of course the athletes both sponsored and unsponsored at the Canadian Death Race, athletic longevity is of great interest to me.

I could go on and on about how supplements, nutrition and smarts can literally extend your career for decades, far beyond what the genetic dye your parents cast when they had you will do, but that is a topic for my anti-aging newsletters.

If you care about anti-aging and staying young and strong, feel free to visit www.DrDavesBest.com and sign up for the free newsletters there.

But for today I want to talk about overtraining and the first thing to go.

Coaches and athletes will tell you that monitoring your heart rate is a good way to see if you are over training.

Increases in heart rate 5 to 10% above your usual established resting heart rat can often indicate overtraining.

There are other factors you have to take into account which are:

1) When did you take that resting heart rate? You really need to
lay awake but still a few minutes after the alarm clock wakes you if you use an alarm clock, because that will send your heart rate and blood pressure through the roof!

2) Have you consumed any alcohol during the past 24 hours?

3) How many hours did you sleep? Sleep deprivation especially can raise resting heart rate.

4) How much caffeine or other stimulants have you had in the past 24 hours?

5) Are you sick or getting sick?

6) What has your nutrition been like?

7) And of course a whole bevy of conditions from accelerated thyroids to pregnancy anemia (in women sometimes related to menstrual flow).

If the answers to these questions are ”nothing unusual” then your resting heart rate is valid and you can use it, providing you have a couple of days to compare with each other.

Erratic heart rates are not of much use and could indicate anything from not knowing how to take a heart rate to an irregular heart rate, so keep that in mind.

OK let’s say you can use your heart rate data to watch your training.
Great, but what is really the first thing to take a pounding when you over train and what can you expect?

Well first your immune system and, depending on how many sick people you are around and what time of the year it is, you can expect anything from low grade flu-like symptoms that don’t go away and make you chronically sore and tired to a full blown viral or, in extreme cases, a sever bacterial illness like pneumonia.

Now it has been years since I’ve had a serious illness primarily due to my Immune Booster supplement and the other great things I put in my body, but journey back to my first running career, which culminated in me running a couple of marathons some 9 years ago.

During the training for the third one I was pushing really hard and also lifting some serious weights.

Giving my body mixed signals and stimulating two very different systems (strength and endurance) was more than a physician working 70+ hours a week could handle.

I developed a flu-like illness in late spring, long after the “flu” was out of the area. True, I had been around quite a few sick people; that is an occupational hazard, but I was also sleep deprived, over-caffeinated (I am not much for caffeine anymore), under rested and over stressed.

On top of that I decided to run a “practice marathon” at an 8 minute mile pace which was hard for me.

The net result was that I got sick. It started with extreme fatigue and achiness beyond what I would normally expect.

The next day I felt a bit better so I decided to do a strength workout and noticed I was very short of breath.

A day later the cough started. Within 5 days I was coughing for long spells and bringing up ugly looking stuff that does not belong in your lungs.

I broke down and took antibiotics, something I rarely do and did something even rarer. I actually finished all 10 days worth!

Of course it did absolutely nothing to speed up this illness since it was most likely viral but was desperate to get back to my training. I had to speak at a conference so I also had to travel and be on an airplane, which we all know is a cesspool of germs!

But after about 10 days of no running and no lifting I was feeling pretty good so off I went to do a standard 10K RUN.

BIG MISTAKE and I knew it within the first mile. Every hill caused me to gasp and on more than one occasion I had to stop and catch my breath. Stupidly, I willed myself to finish even though I grew more fatigued and exhausted with each step. Needless to say I was down for the count for another 10 days before I truly turned the corner.

Now I tell you this story because it represents the two opposing forces that plague all runners no matter how much they know and how educated they are.

Those forces are common sense and dogged determination.

Let’s face it, we all “run through” stuff and sometimes we get away with it. If we stopped for every little ache and pain, especially as we age, we wouldn’t be running -- we’d be swimming instead or doing Yoga (both of which are great supportive activities by the way!).

Each of us somehow thinks we are “special” and the laws of physics and the universe do not apply to us.

So we keep running as if our very lives depended on it.

And when we crash and burn we feel our bodies have let us down.

No, my friend, you and I are both human. But I have seen this drama played over and over again in so many different ways that I use my own stupidity as a cautionary tale for you.

I should have known better but the “runner” part of me won and I pushed myself.

The net result was that a 7 day illness sidelined me for almost a full month before I recuperated enough to get back on my training.

It was a blessing.

A lot of little aches and pains went away and stayed away until after the marathon.

I was so pent up and anxious to run again that I was very highly motivated, but I was also humbled by my own frailty so I was very careful about my training.

This focus and this knowing my own limitations has come in handy 9 years later when I decided to dust off my running shoes and tackle the
78 mile Canadian Death Race in 2008 and again this year.

But not before I was humbled again in a different way.

But that is a tale for another blog.

Bottom line: when you over train, your immune system goes first no matter what kind of training you do; strength, strength endurance or pure endurance. The net result will be that you will perform poorly and may wind up getting sick.

If you take time off and wait until your body tells you, really tells you “I am better” and not just that little devil in your brain saying “train, train, train” you will save yourself a ton of time and aggravation.

There is no sport anywhere where people push themselves more, over train more and ignore their bodies more than distance running! If any of this sounds like you, and as a runner I could place a 95% positive bet that you have been exactly at the place I just described, then do this magical thing: learn from your experience and don’t do it again!

In the long run this compulsive running behavior will lead you to run less and shorten your career.

My soon-to-be-released book tells you a lot about how to get around all this but in the meantime heed my advice…

Listen to your body or your running will be the first thing to go!