I’ve hit a running plateau

I love running. I usually feel good while running and enjoy periods of my life when I am running often. But this is not always the case. Here are my four least favorite situations to be in as a runner in order from crappiest to just plain crappy.

1. Starting to run after taking several months off. You feel like you’ve just started running (see #2 below), except you can still remember how good you were only a few months ago. This makes the fact that you suck now all the more apparent and misery-inducing.
2. First starting to run. It is hard to start running. It takes weeks, sometimes months, to see any positive effects. Often, you will gain weight as your appetite increases faster than your metabolism. It really is no wonder than so many people don’t stick with it. It sucks for a long time before it gets good.
3. Hill reps. If you like doing hill reps, you are a masochist. From the moment you start up that damn hill, everything hurts and you know you’ve got to run up it at least another five or six times. You constantly feel like you’re going to vomit and muscles that you rarely work out are sore for days after.
4. You hit a running plateau.

It is this last point that I’m in now. Running plateaus generally occur at about the midpoint of most training programs. During the first few weeks of training, you steadily get better, with each run feeling better than the last. You’re getting faster and every run starts to feel easy. After a few weeks of this euphoria, you hit a plateau. Instead of getting better, each run feels the same, but compared to how great you were just feeling, it feels like you’re slogging through each run. You’re working harder than ever and not getting any faster or better.

I rank this fourth in my last of crappy running periods because the challenge is mostly mental. Physically, I feel fine and am still improving, albeit imperceptibly. Running just isn’t as much fun as it was during the first few weeks of my training. Experience is on my side, however. I’ve been in this situation before and know that plateaus eventually end. Once they do, training becomes fun again as my body ramps up for more speed and distance gains. For now, though, it’s a matter of waiting it out and slogging through a few bad runs to get back to the good.

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