Do you watch sports or have any pod casts you really enjoy? When battling the elements day in and day out like yourself, sometimes its really nice just to hop on a treadmill and zone out by watching a sporting event on tv or listening to something that you are interested in.

I have run similar mileage like yourself and never ever ran on a treadmill until a few years back. Now that I have embraced the treadmill and run on it up to 50 percent of the time, I have found that I don't get nearly worn out physically or mentally. I also use hr on the treadmill with nothing structured just to crank out the mileage/time and that also gives my mind a break.. I also have some solid ADD which helps with the treadmill.

Just a thought/suggestion but kudos for you going after it. The night is darkest just before the break of dawn!

When is the last time you crossed a finish line? Any race, any distance?

It seems like you simply increased your mileage too quickly.

For me, too much of a single thing burns me out. I did one week of your kind of running and I burned out and stopped.

One has to ask why does one exercise? For me, the first reason is health!! But I then sign up for races which provide me the extra
motivation I need to keep going, especially relating to weight!! I love to eat but. I have my first race on Sunday, so it has been no cookies
or ice cream for about a week now. Got myself down to my too low number last night so yea, cookies today at lunch.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Last "race" was Ironman Canada in July. I paced a half marathon in October at 1:40, but that was more of an excuse to meet some people and have a good time.

This may be. When I was training for the Ironman, I was doing no more than 50 miles a week. When biking and swimming were out of the equation, it seemed far too easy to up the mileage. Could this have been an illusion and it finally caught up? Does it take a few months for it to finally break? I thought holding at 80 for a few weeks in December was good enough prep.


This is the part I'm struggling with the most. I run, bike, and occasionally swim for fun! I enjoy it... well, I used to enjoy it. I use races as a way to motivate myself to go out and get some satisfaction from a challenge. There's a level of satisfaction from getting to the destination, but I I used to also enjoy the journey. What happens when the journey is no longer fun? Will the satisfaction at the end make up for the shit 10 weeks that precede it? I don't want to sacrifice my long-term happiness/gratification for the short term, but I don't know where the right line to draw is. Where have you found your line?

Ah so you are in Seattle? Where do you run? Would a change in run venue help any? Yes it'd mean driving somewhere to run. I can recommend a few locations that will not bore you.

Yeah. I'm in Seattle. If you can recommend something new that's not way too far (I'd consider Tiger too far), I'd be interested.

All my runs originate from basically Key Arena, so my runs will start by either running down to Elliot Bay or down Mercer to Lake Union. Most of my runs incorporate some combinations of the following: Magnolia/Discovery, Ballard Locks, Fremont Bridge, Burke Gilman, University Bridge, Montlake Bridge, Lake Union, Arboretum, Lake WA Boulevard, I-90 trail, and on really long days I make it out to Seward.

Okay so mostly Seattle proper?

Can you drive to the Eastside? Google will reveal locations of these trails.

Cross Kirkland Corridor. Park anywhere along the trail on neighborhood streets. Length 6 miles. You can do a solid 12 mile run by going in one direction to the end, then the other direction. Unpaved soft sand surface. It's like running on clouds.

Sammamish River Trail. Length 10 miles. Park in Marymoor park (trail runs north from there), or 60 acre park, or if you are coming up over the top of the lake park in Bothell or Woodinville. Paved trail, with a soft shoulder. Stunning farmland scenery. I see deer and eagles here pretty often. Muskrats and otters sometimes. Stay away from geese they are mean motherfuckers.

Lake Sammamish Trail. Length 8 miles although sections of it are closed for maintenance right now. No worries you can divert to a shoulder on East Lake Sammamish Parkway. That road, by the way, is best cycling training in the area IMHO. This trail runs south from Marymoor park along Lake Sammamish toward Issaquah. Park at either end. This is a run along multi million dollar homes on the lakefront with great views of the lake.

You know the I-90 trail. That will take you from Seattle all the way to Issaquah if you want to run that far. Or go as far as Mercer Slough in Bellevue and do some loops inside that park.

Finally best for last. Snoqualmie Valley Trail. About 20 miles long. Runs from Duvall to Snoqualmie near I-90. Unpaved surface. This is where I do long weekend runs. Usually park in Carnation at the Tolt-Macdonald park. Although Fall City parking might be closer. This is pretty far though about as far as Tiger Mt. Other trails are closer to you.

Take a break and find another hobby to enjoy for a month or so. Running isn't going anywhere and you will not lose as much fitness as you probably think. Remember, it's a hobby and it's supposed to be enjoyable.

I'd also suggest throwing out the scale and any GPS watch you own. Obsessing over numbers is usually not a good thing.

"All was going well, but then I started to lose my self-control when it came to food. With the self-control gone, the mind went away also."

To me, this was the key sentence in your post....You need to recognize when your about to implode and let it happen. Indulge your food cravings for a day or two.. It's your body telling you something, it's not you or a lack of will power.

Don't beat yourself up about it. Don't go down the rabbit hole of self-guilt and pity. Just have confidence that you'll come out the other side ok and ready to pick it up again...Is it ideal.. no. Is it part of learning how to train and how much your body and brain can withstand..yes

As you get smarter..ie not increasing our mileage as quickly as you did...the implosions will occur less frequently and they won't last as long.

Food cravings/lack of control for me are a key sign that i'm a bit on the edge and need to back off.

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"Good genes are not a requirement, just the obsession to beat ones brains out daily"...the Griz

I've found that low points in training and lack of motivation are inevitable, so for a bit I think HTFU is good advice. However, if they last more than a couple of weeks/month then maybe it's time to try an alternative approach. I go for making it 'fun' for a couple of weeks/month. Take the pressure off and be less structured with training. Try and get out for trail runs instead if you enjoy those. Go mountain biking. Keep yourself fit so you aren't going backwards at all, but make it all fun with no pressure. I usually find I come right, but if not, well, we only live once so maybe it's time to move on to something else.

Wow. I feel like such a slacker. Since "retiring" from triathlon back in October 2014, I focused 90% of my training on just the run. At that point, my stock, "just get out of bed and out the door" week was around 35 miles. Occasionally I'd go higher, sometimes slightly lower but that was where I was at without even thinking about it.

Over the last 2 years I've built that up to between 50-55 miles per week. That was done very very slowly but that's where I'm at now, i.e. 55 miles per week is my minimum without any planning. By summer I intend to have it closer to 60-65 miles. Again, very slowly.

All of that to say I think you built your mileage too quickly. Coming off a base of around 40 miles, you probably would have been better served going with Pfitz's 18/55 plan instead of the 18/70 plan.

I found myself in a similar situation recently and I'm currently pulling out of it. A couple of things:

First, set small goals, and build momentum towards getting back to your plan. Dial back your expectations temporarily. I reached out to a friend to get an "Accountabili-buddy" so we text daily our workouts/goals and progress.

If you're finding that tough, take a step back and look at your stress bucket (all the things adding stress to your life). Then decide if you can re-frame your training to be your stress relief or if your intensity was adding too much stress. My recent burnout was due to too much external stress and I just had to take a break and deal with it.

Finally, you need to call yourself out on the self-defeating behavior. I used to stay up late, then miss morning workouts and complain that I wasn't getting back in shape. I had to be honest with myself and say, "If you get to bed, you'll get up, then you wont' have anything to complain about". Basically, just get the virtuous cycle going again.

Good Luck!

When I'm feeling toasted, my go to is to do whatever I want. Personal favorite is chucking in the headphones and going to the trails. Nice and slow run, enjoy some chill music and the surroundings. Or, ride the trainer but turn the computer off and just ride for time. Tunes, TV, podcast, whatever I want. I also love to lift heavy.

Wash, rinse, repeat, you'll know when the time is right.

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"Don't you have to go be stupid somewhere else?"..."Not until 4!"

I'll spare you anecdotes and toss out some motivation theory processes that work.

First, being super consistent and then struggling this time of year is very common. I don't agree with the idea of finding a new hobby.

Rather, recognize that motivation is a process of discrepancies: compare your current state to your desired state. If you use your pre-holiday consistency as the benchmark, the discrepancy is too large and daunting. But, if you set a very manageable goal, such as working out everyday, no matter how little, and being careful with how fast you ramp things up, that could be a discrepancy-reduction which you can achieve this week, and that reduction will allow you to internalize that achievement and then training will begin to once again provide intrinsic motivation, self perpetuating itself. It's also wise to have multi-level desired states. So, toss some races on the calendar as a 3rd goal. But, that skips the 2nd set of goals: weekend training workouts and locale. toss some some long bike rides and run on the calendar for the next coming weeks in areas you would like to revisit or explore with workouts you look forward to accomplishing on your own or with others, and use the anticipation of those workouts to incentivize your in-week training consistency.

If you find yourself questioning the purpose of training, know that you're not alone, but then recognize the benefits other areas of your life enjoy due to the mastery of skill, self-discipline and regulation, and intrinsic motivation you gain from training and using training and racing to balance your life and improve your positive perception of yourself and how that improved self-perception positively affects your relations with others.

The big take away, though, is recognizing that once you close just one small current vs. desired state discrepancy, the internalized self-determined motivation process gets kicked into motion and goes a bit on auto pilot. You have to trust that this process will happen - this is also true of emotional states, such as those associated with depression - you have to go through the motions even though everything in your being is telling you that nothing will help and you possibly feel hopeless (at least with regard to training in this case). From an evolutionary psych perspective, this upward spiraling of positive emotion stems from the self-regulatory parts of the brain; despite a hunter-gatherer's mood, there were survival related tasks to be done which required competence, skill and mastery, and the completion of these tasks were in and of themselves motivating in a self-perpetuating manner once the task was begun and after the task was complete, increasing the likelihood of survival. While we are not in such dire situations, we are still wired to benefit from these discrepancy-reducing processes. The challenge is getting started when survival is not on the line; the key is to start with small current vs desired state discrepancies.

Breaking down the muddled mental quagmire that is the perception of burnout and lost motivation into a series of steps in a simple process provides a ladder out. For me, personally, understanding the cognitive processes underlying discrepancy reduction and upward/downward spirals (control-theory, prospect theory, conservation of resources theory, broaden and build theory, attachment theory, flow theory, game theory) is incredibly helpful - such as recognizing variables that reduce goal discrepancies with no additional work on your part. These include music, location, training partners, interest and encouragement and availability to listen about training/racing from a loved one - these all act in the same way that swishing a glucose solution in your mouth and spitting it out worked in increasing self-regulation in the form of running for longer periods of time in the Noakes late '90's studies, with regard to reducing the regulatory functioning of the mind's central governor - support from friends and loved ones and mentors, and stimuli such as music and training locale and travel, affect that same central governor.

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There could be any number of reasons for what you are feeling. Although I don't know your height, 152lbs is pretty skinny-mini. As others have said, a treadmill is a great way to break it up. The key thing is to get out the door - it is better to at least start a session and see what happens. If you need to pull the plug you need to pull the plug, but without at first trying you are giving up too easily. As an endurance athlete running 80+ miles you are supposed to be a little fatigued. It could all be in your head. Fwiw, if I were to give up based on how I was feeling before starting a session I would have missed out on some of the best sessions of my life.

It also may just be coincidence but you ramped up pretty good till Christmas. It wouldn't hurt to get a full blood panel to see where numbers like Vitamin D are. The process is pretty simple, I wrote up a blurb on my experience recently. My be worth at least reading

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I was lacking motivation recently when it came to my bike training. I've been a strong FOP biker and I've made gain after gain after gain with each 6-8 week training block over the past 3 years. All of a sudden I felt like I was plateaued, workouts that were 88-94% were very difficult and I was doubting whether I could get through this. After a week or so I began to tell myself "Stop looking at the particulars of the session before you begin" and I just got on my bike l allowed the Trainer Road text to tell me the session while I was in the warm up.

In addition to that I was finding it very tough to get up in the morning to get in my sessions. I chalked it up to SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) living in the North East. Waking up to blackness outside was impossible and I'd just defer my sessions to the evening. This was more difficult to get past than the bike motivation. Then all of a sudden I saw a video (can't recall where) and it said something along the lines of "To be great in the sport of Triathlon you just have to do things that are difficult. That's tough intervals, long hours in the saddle, and dragging your ass out of a warm bed" when I heard this a light bulb went off, because I do want to be great at this sport. Now I'm getting up and in past years I could only do this to get on my bike however now I'm ready to do any of the 4 sessions I do weekly (Swim/Bike/Run/Strength) with pleasure. I'm now equating it with "building my greatness".

In the end the best two pieces of advice are:

1. Don't seek out data about the session, weather, whos showing up, etc. Just do small goals, get out of bed, get a glass of water, get my shoes on, go out the door, start my car, etc and focus on them. Don't skip any step no matter how small and keep ticking them off the list and you'll find yourself accomplishing your larger goal.

2. Embrace that the endurance sport world is tough however part of those PBs and achievements are the tough parts of training. Things we don't necessarily like doing but make us better in the end. Tap into your desire to reach your goal and make sure it's worth it

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"Train so you have no regrets @ the finish line"

There's been a lot of things people have said that have opened a lot more personal insight than I was expecting from asking this question. It's amazing how people can all hit on very personal things without knowing anything about me other than being burnt out from running.

I'm going to mix in a lot of the advice I'm hearing here. I think I need to lower my scope of my goals--not just with endurance sports, but for life. I need to make it so every day can have a fulfilling success.

I'm going to drop the pfitz structure. I'm going to run fast when I want to run fast and run long when I want to run long. Most importantly I'm going to run when it's fun, and part of this is trying to get a change of scenery every once in awhile. I'm probably going to search some of the outer suburb trails that I don't get to see even by bike.

As far as volume and weight goes, right now I'm going to try to let my body tell me when to eat and when to run. Hopefully it doesn't betray me.

I appreciate all of the responses, and it feels good knowing a lot of people have dealt with similar situations and successfully got back to a happy normal.