Pushing Myself Hard... Tuesday, October 7

Headed out for my morning run today but, despite being rather optimistic about it, today's run was much slower than expected. It was slower than yesterday's and yesterday's run was already a worrisome slow pace for me. My pacing has been getting slower this week. Haven't hit my goal pacing of keeping it under 5:20mins/km since last week's run and I perceive this as a sign of over training.

According to Competitor.com, these are the 7 warning signs that you are overtraining and my comments about whether or not they apply to my current situation.

1. You’re more irritable than normal.

...umm, YUP!  Note to Snickers, keep me away from the Pesky Parkers!!!  I told the Corner Chicken Godfather today I'm going to get a fourth dog, call it Karma and train it to bite the bums of our Pesky Parkers... and I absolutely wasn't joking when I said it!

2. You’re not sleeping soundly at night. 

...yes and no.  I sleep, I sleep a lot, but it's more so because I am just too exhausted to do anything else but zone out and float off to La-La Land.  I randomly wake up in the middle of the night though, to check my phone and see if it's the next day yet.  There's always that feeling of anxiety I get when I notice one more day is gone and one day is closer and I think I check the date on my phone anywhere from 2-4 times during the night.

3. You have to motivate yourself to get out the door for each and every run.

...oh ya!  I love the after run feeling but getting out the door for my morning run means I need a solid good hour to convince myself to go run.  And then, when I'm out the door, it's my post run meal that motivates me to run faster -- the faster I run, the faster I get to eat my delish breakfast.

4. Your legs and arms feel sluggish all the time.

...yes and no.  Some days more yes than no but thanks to coffee I'm able to sport a buzz to distract me from feeling sluggish.

5. You experience sudden weight loss or gain.

...well that's a given considering I have to drop weight for this fight.  I lost 3.6kgs in 4 days last week.

6. Your workouts are inconsistent. 

...my workouts are consist, just my energy levels aren't.  Perhaps my workouts wouldn't be so consistent if it weren't for Snickers yelling at me to push and pull me through them.

7. The people around you keep telling you that you don’t seem quite right.

...yes!  Tried to count a pile of protein bars on the juice bar and I said "2, 4, 7". It wasn't that I couldn't count in 2's, because I can, but instead it was because I thought I had seen seven protein bars. Am feeling and talking like I'm a bit punch drunk.

Mentally I'm all about my morning runs.  I don't like mornings and I don't specifically like running, it's hard and draining, but I do look forward to and feed off the satisfaction that comes with knowing I made my morning productive and did my body good.  However, with my pacing getting slower, it has had a discouraging and frustrating effect on me, not to mention I totally pass out with exhaustion no sooner after I return home, shower and eat.  I have a solid 1-2 hour nap after my running.  Then I wake up, eat a bit, and get ready for my boxing and weight training.

Tomorrow the plan is to take the day off running.

Usually I'd have two days straight of running, followed by one day off, but with this being Korea and me having such little time to drop weight and prep for this fight, training has been kicked into hardcore and is super intense.  It's still very frustrating to be trained by Snickers for my boxing but I know he's only giving me a hard time because he honestly cares and wants me to succeed.  I'm loving the weight training he's making do though; it's super rough and every day it leaves me with another body part that is super sore.  Those hanging oblique cross raises from yesterday left me curled up on my office chair, wanting to die.  OK, so maybe not die but they definitely left me in pain.  Today it's my forearms that are burning.  One of the exercises we did were hanging raises and hanging holds on the monkey bars here at Hulk's.  The stress on my forearms from the exercise has left me struggling and in pain when it comes to gripping anything and using my arm strength to pick things up... I love it.

It was a hard day of training, another hard day of training I should say.  And as strange as it may sound for me to write this but I kind of feel relieved that my pacing with my morning runs hasn't been at par.  For awhile there I was wondering if I was pushing myself enough and whether or not I really do train hard.  I know we all have our own definition of hard and what's hard for one may not be hard for another, but I've been wondering a lot lately if I'm really pushing myself.  Not hitting my running goal pace proves it though, I am pushing myself hard.  Perhaps I am pushing myself too hard.