Here’s the situation: I’m 45, and if I don’t win my AG or come close in local duathlons and triathlons, I’m disappointed. So, I try to train hard and smart. I also have a five month old daughter, and due to that and other details I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in months. By “good night sleep” I mean at least 4 hours in a row, or more than 7 hours total. I’m continuing to train, but am I just wearing myself out? Am I at least keeping my aerobic capacity up there? I recently did a 39:05 10K on a treadmill (alternating between 3:20 and 3:00/half mile, and picking it up to 5:00 for the last bits), but then pulled a muscle (!) in my back near the end.
Will just doing easy workouts do anything for me? I feel like I don’t want to give up what conditioning I have (bike TTs start in April), but I don’t want to break down.
As an added complication, I’m having foot surgery on 12/24, which will keep me off my feet for two weeks (can you say “swim with a bag around your foot”?), then two more of no running, at least.
in my non-expert opinion you should think of sleep (as well as nutrition) as another essential “pillar of training” along with aerobic base and speed work and the rest of it. Remember that training breaks you down, rest (and specifically sleep i think where the growth hormones are released) is where your body can build itself back together and hopefully stronger than before. So when you schedule a BT workout you need to schedule a corresponding “BT sleep session.” Just my opinion.
This is just a question, so lets not start a flame war but, does this statement of yours, " if I don’t win my AG or come close in local duathlons and triathlons, I’m disappointed." contain the true source of your problems?
What if your goal was to acheive the best performance you are capable of, rather than basing your satisfaction on what others do?
With such limited information we can only offer so much advice. That said, I think you need to go to bed. When you get up, and feel rested, train smart. Forget about sticking to a rigid schedule that may have you doing speedwork after a night of 3hrs of sleep. Train as often as possible easy and on a day you feel rested and energized, do your BT or long sessions.
Also, remember to listen to your body. It will tell you when it’s time to train and when it’s time to sack out.
My intention is to be the best I can be, which for me means training at a pretty high intensity. It is independent of what others do; I put that comment in as reference to the level I expect of myself. At that point and at my age, I’m cutting it pretty fine between getting the most out of myself and self-destruction. No flame taken.
You do raise the issue I have of only comparing myself to those who are faster, but that’s an issue for a whole 'nother thread…
You need to list your priorities and then you’ll understand better what you need to do. With the other stress in your life you are stretching the rubber band to the breaking point by continuing to hold yourself to that performance standard. There is more to this sport than where you place. Do what you can do. That is all you can do. Don’t try to fit a square peg in a round hole. It sounds to me like your normal training volume is a huge square peg right now. Sometimes it has to give. Trust me, you are the only one who is thinking less of yourself if you don’t finish on the podium. Maybe 5th or 10th AG is all you can do right now. Maximize what you have, not what you wish you had. Life will be a whole lot more enjoyable that way.
I personally respect the person who maximizes his 5 or 8 hours of training time per week and races as best they can, often not as well as they could, but still maintains balance throughout their life. I respect that person a lot more than the one who mortgages their family life and job performance by shoehorning a 10 month racing schedule, including an Ironman into every year. Is your daughter ever going to think less of you because you didn’t win the first place tin trinket at the local-yokel pillowman triathlon challenge this year?
The real question is: Which is more important being an age group stud or being a stud Dad? When you train train hard, get rest when you can and if you don’t do so well at a race smile and kiss your little girl. Find Balance. This is what most MOPer struggle with.
Let me try again. My question is not about making trade-offs between training and my other life obligations. I’ve already done that by training much less than 10 hours a week. My question is about the usefulness of training while not rested. Does doing a 6 mile run at race pace (equivalent to 6min/mile) or at 7:15/mile pace do anything positive for me, or does it have a negative effect? Listening to my body is sound advice, but I’d not be training at all.
I’m not sure I’m understanding why you’re not sleeping well, but don’t underestimate the value of a good night’s sleep. Think back to the last time you went to bed early on a Friday or Saturday night and woke up when your body woke itself up the following day. Remember how good it felt? Get enough sleep… such a simple concept… and free too!
And I second the “balance” post. Life’s all about balance.
There’s an expression that goes “there is no overtraining, only underrecovering”.
The idea is that when you are sleeping well, eating well, and are relatively stress and obligation free, you can handle a boatload of training.
But, once you start eating like crap, missing sleep, increasing stress, too many responsiblities, (or all of the above), you start to get run down and “overtrained” (an overused word). In strength training you get what is called “weight lifters cold”, because your immune system takes a beating. I suppose we call it “triathlete’s cold” here.
Whenever I know I’m going to undersleep a few days in a row, I always make sure I am eating better than usual. I also up my vitamin C intaske to keep my immune system going.
You are not out of the ordinary. Most people train no matter what. Very few prepare to ensure their nutrition is in order and that they get enough sleep. In reality, training is the easy (fun) part.
In lifting we caled these “out of gym factors” (stress, sleep, food, responsibility, etc) and your out of gym factors need to be in ordser for your best progress.
Concentrate on ways to get your out of gym factors in order. Plan for it in advance.
Let US try again. You already know the answer to your question. I know how hard it is to let go of your potential when your priorities get in the way. You need sleep. You are running your body into the ground in the hopes that you can squeak out another season on the top of your AG podium. It ain’t gonna happen without something giving. That something is likely to be your body. Do what you can and be satisfied. The short nights won’t last forever. The hardest thing for folks like us to do is not to listen to our bodies, but to OBEY when they say “enough is ENOUGH!”
I’m 48 and, like yourself, strive to get on the 'ol age group podium in most local-yokel races (secondary of course to beating my younger wife). Good on you for having the energy and courage to raise a kid these days! I would say that you should really listen very closely to your body during this sleep-challenged period – even more so after the surgery. Sure, I think you still get roughly the same training benefits even if you are fatigued (assuming you can still keep up the intensity of the workout) but what you are risking is the lack of muscle/cell repair from less “deep sleep”. At our ages that effect will soon rear it’s ugly head in the form of pulled muscles (sore back?), tendonitis, tendonosis, bursitis, plantar, and the list goes on… I went thru a steep learning curve on this when I was about 45… and have learned my lesson.
Unless your talking at the national/world class level, the guys on the 45 plus age group podiums that I see are the guys who can stay injury-free by training consistently and very very wisely. It takes patience and discipline as the years start piling up. I’m sure Scott Tinley could wax eloquently on the subject…
“Listening to my body is sound advice, but I’d not be training at all.”
Then you should not be training at all (until you can recover adequately) let alone doing race-pace tempo runs in the middle of winter!!! (I guess i’m assuming you live in northern hemisphere) but regardless, TAKE A WEEK OR TWO OFF!!! DO NOTHING TRI-RELATED for a while!
as to your query re: “usefulness of training while not rested”, id say “not rested” is a relative term. One elite coach once said that elite athletes wake up and go to bed tired all the time (from gordo’s november 2003 newsletter on fatigue). So the trick is understanding different types of fatigue (good and bad) and knowing why you are going out to do a 6mile run at race pace (or any other workout) and having a good idea before hand whether you are in good condition to do so. That again requires listening to your body and also having some idea about how each workout helps you achieve your race goals. But i think everyone will agree that as your perceived level of fatigue goes up the advisability/benefit of doing higher intensity workouts goes down. And this would seem to be especially true if you already have cut back to “much less than 10hours/week” and still have fatigue issues. In fact, on such a reduced volume I’d say there is very little “usefulness” in doing high intensity work at all because of the risk of injury and because, IMO (following Mark Allen and others) developing an aerobic fat-burning base is the key. So, in your shoes i’d focus on energy-building aerobic work instead of no-pain-no-gain killer workouts. Again, no expertise just my opinion.
No offense, but with a five month year old daughter, perhaps you should have other priorities.
Priority #1 should be “being in a state of mind that leads to being patient”. If you’re “menatally and physically fried” from training yourself into the gorund, you won’t be able to be patient when you need to be (baby won’t stop spitting up, throwing up, or crying, etc).
It’s just triathloning. You won’t “lose everything” by taking a week off. Get recovered, come back strong, and sound.
Do everything you can to stay “mentally at peace”. I went through the same thing with weight-training and an infant. I would try and kill myself everytime I trained, and I found it only made me edgy and impatient. I had a hot-tempered dad, and knew I didn’t want to be one. Back off the training and keep an even-keel.
Go take a nap with your baby. Sleep nose to nose and let them grab your ear. Good sleepin’ like that.
Good luck. be sure to make a follow-up thread in a week or so and let us know how you’re feeling and how the week off affected your training. There will be more of us in your position.
I’m not sure if everyone else has missed the point of your question, or if I’m about to, but here goes!
What you are saying is that you have made the trade-offs and are left with a set numberof hours to train which still works round your daughter.
What you want to know is if you should be using these hours to train intensely, which normally works but is breaking you down, or if you can train easier and still benefit??
I am in a similar situation, although 10 years younger, and come from a similar high intensity approach. Last year I did a lot of easy sessions to try and keep myself alive, but still training! - net result was actually a much deeper level of fitness than ever before. You just need to allow a few weeks to build some intensity and bring yourself to a peak later on, more from a psychological point of view .
I used to red-line nearly every session - now I do it only in races, and broke PBs in every race last year.
For the first time, I backed off or rested if I felt tired, and concentrated on being consistent rather than all-out then exhausted. I added about .9mph to my run speed at equivalent heart rates, and can now recover much more quickly from interval session because of low level consistency for a few months.
Don’t worry about pushing yourself for now - you will break down and have to take time off. Go easier but stick with it, and you will notice benefits across the board when you have recovered some energy and start to ramp it up again.
I have two daughters (now ages 8 and 11) so I’ve been where you are now. I seemed to eventually adjust to a lot less sleep than in my pre-children days. As to your questions about training … when you are tired and feel the need to run go ahead but just back off a little so you don’t hurt yourself. I despise treadmill running and will always run outside (I live in Ontario, Canada so I’m not blessed with great year round good weather!) since I’ve managed to hurt myself on treadmills in the past (My theory is that they are not good for fast running like you were doing since the surface is moving so quickly when you plant your foot that it torques your leg around too much). If the weather gets too crummy just ride on your trainer (I used to put my daughter in her high chair next to me and play with her while I rode). You will get through this period and get back to normal sleep so just keep it going with a little less intensity and by TT season in April your child will be sleeping better, you’ll be sleeping better and even though you’re not in peak form (who needs to be that early in the season anyway?) you’ll be able to get back in the groove pretty quickly.
ps. There is nothing wrong with wanting to smoke everyone in your age group and being disappointed with not winning … it is a good motivator!
“No offense, but with a five month year old daughter, perhaps you should have other priorities.”
My apologies. Must have been in one of my grump moods when I wrote that. I remember my kids at that age being a lot of work but I have no business telling anyone how to parent.
YES you are. Your going to need a coffin sooner than you think. Yes running at 7:15 pace is beneficial. It takes many of those runs to give your body the ability to do your 6min/mile runs successfully. Over and over again. Most don’t realize how fit and fast you can become on just aerobic training. Yes, you need sleep. Your body rejuvinates(sp) itself at rest more than during waking hours. You produce more of certain hormones that help your body repair itself asleep than awake
No, trying to finish in the top 3 every race is not practical or realistic. You can’t control how other people race. If 6 super fast guys show up in your AG, you race your best race ever and finish 7th why would you complain? They are just faster and you had the race of your life. My fastest race ever was a 9th place out of the college tuition money finish in a pro race. I had a boner for hours (funny looks in the transition area you will get)!
Other races I’ve won by having good races. Only a few of my wins was I overjoyed with, very satisfied big smile on my face for hours yes, overjoyed no, again funny looks for hours.
There is more to sport this sport than top AG finishes.
I have a 13 yo son so I have done the small kid thing too. I experienced many of your frustrations. I stopped training when he was young and I paid mightily. I attribute getting really sick w/ pneumonia to inactivity. I would advise low level totally aerobic workouts. I agree that workouts at too high levels are not good either. There will be many happy days of pulling your child in a cart behind the bike, running with her in a carriage. These will become your base workouts… and your fitness will be higher than ever before. Patience. Just workout enough to stay healthy.
Now that he is fast enough to draft me up to nearly 30mph could someone advise me how to train to keep faster than he will be next year?