so i went out for a 2 hr run today. i’ve been doing some longer runs (1.5 hr or so) and decided to step it up for a longer one since i am doing powerman at the end of the month, and this summer have been only doing sprints. my base training early on was lacking due to an injury, but i have recovered well and am running normal milage now. i felt awful the whole time, maybe a little dehydrated but i’m not really sure why, but after being told about how hard the run course is a powerman, i forced myself to keep going other than two short water breaks. afterwards i felt worse than a race, horrible head/stomach ace etc, and felt absolutely miserable. my question is, we all have bad days, how do you know when its bad enough to call it quits early, verus when to HTFU and push through it? i tend to push through it rather than quit, although sometimes it gets to the point where i am barely putting one foot in front of another and i am wondering if on those days it is worth it. this doesn’t happen too often to me, but when it does it is usually the running.
Very little is achieved by pushing through it other than building mental toughness. Your body is talking to you, listen to what it is saying. If it’s bad and doesn’t get better, it is time to quit. Body is a fine instrument, don’t beat the shit out of it.
The goal for every workout should be the least amount of work for the most amount of gain. Coaching, including self-coaching, is an art. You have to learn and rely on experiences to know what the proper decision is with every questionable moment in your training. This being said, it’s probably better to be conservative and cut back the workout if you feel it’s just beating you down. Undertrained is always better than overtrained.
I just read my reply to your thread, and I would have to add that I am no where near as hardcore as that makes me sound…I would cut a workout short if I really wasn’t into it, couldn’t hit target speeds/heartrates/whatever and trully felt unmotivated to do it.
I would ask in reply, “when do you call it quits in a race?” Don’t mean to be an ass, but some training sessions should have an element of difficulty they are known as “breakthough sessions”. I here what everyone is saying and it is necessary to listen to the body, but typically it’s mostly mental, and we can all find excuses to quit. I would suggest digging in for 15 more minutes, then re-evaluate…it’s like the first 4-5 miles of the run in an Ironman, they feel like hell, and you wonder how you can last another 22…but it goes away…until the end!
sometimes my swim workouts get cut short if I’m running late for class… or if I lose track of what time it is and all of a sudden there’s a lifeguard at the end of my lane saying “OUT! NOW!”
hey, I took my bike out on Saturday. It was only ten minutes but it’s ten minutes more than zero 
If you try to “dig deep” in every workout to simulate a race you are destined for mediocrity. This is one of the beauties of training with power, or by having some landmark/benchmark points when running. If I dial up the intensity and I feel totally flat, then I pack it in for the day. There is no benefit in ruining myself to ride at an output 5-15% lower than where I should be in a given workout. If I feel like crap and pack it in early enough, then I can usually come back and try it again the next day. Its a lot more important to recover and to do a better job with the workout tomorrow or the next day than it is to slog though the workout just for the sake of being tough.
“The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind you have to convince.”
“Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It’s a state of mind-you could call it character in action.”
“Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.”
“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”
Vince Lombardi
when do you call it quits on a workout?
When you’ve already ran past Paulo and left him far enough behind that you can no longer hear him screaming “HTFU!” behind you, you can call it a day…
…as long as you’ve made a turn and he can’t see that you’ve stopped.
Personally, I’m mediocre enough that I probably wouldn’t make it to Paulo anyway so I can stop whenever I feel like it. If he screamed HTFU at me he’d probably mean Halt! This is F%!#ing Useless.
hey, I took my bike out on Saturday. It was only ten minutes but it’s ten minutes more than zero
thats clearly infinite percent more than zero
yes. most excellent.
I don’t have a class until 9:30 tomorrow and the pool isn’t open in the morning. I can’t run right now so maybe I will take the wicked thing out (or put it on the trainer 
maybe maybe maybe.