Theme of the month: Getting out of my head and dealing with burn out....
Burnout isn’t exactly the same as overtraining that everyone things they have (very few people do enough to overtrain physically but that is a topic for another day), but there’s plenty of
overlap between the two though: chronic exhaustion, a drop in performance, and in many cases a
decision to eventually walk away from the sport. I am almost to the point of walking away from racing in 2021 many times but the only thing that is not allowing me to do so is knowing how depressed I would be if I did, it is a huge part of who I have become the past 15 years.
Let’s start with some definitions from some research I have been doing this month. Athlete burnout is a
psychological syndrome with three different parts: emotional and physical
exhaustion; a reduced sense of accomplishment; and more negative
feelings about your sport. There’s lots of debate about what causes it,
but a common view is that it results from the chronic stress of feeling
that the load placed on you—hard training, competitive expectations,
other aspects of life—is more than you can handle. Basically like I tell all my friends that I help coach, your body does not know the difference between training stress and life stress, stress is stress for your body!
This is why personality traits matter: to some extent, you’re the one who decides what demands to put on yourself. Even the demands that others place on you will be filtered through your perceptions of what they expect. And your level of self-belief will influence how well you think you can handle those demands.
Perfectionism three key elements. One is how you see yourself: “I put pressure on
myself to perform perfectly.” The second is how you think others see
you: “People always expect me to perform perfectly.” And the third is
how you see others: “I am never satisfied with the performance of
others.” The first two are presumably most relevant to the risk of
burnout for athletes; the third, you’d expect, is most relevant in
coaches. I really struggle with all 3 of these with the second one weighing the most on my mind.
Setting high goals and holding yourself to high standards can have lots of positive effects; it’s beating yourself up when you fall short of those standards that is most associated with negative outcomes like depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.
So this is my predicament, how the hell do I get out of this? Hopefully I can somehow let this all go and just go have some fun damn it....... Anyways, enough of my rambling.......
Training Update
Better month than last month but still not the normal "Shad" month that I am used too. Still thinking of taking an extend period off which of course I talked about in last month's post and dug a little bit more into above. Had no races scheduled for July so nothing to bail on like I have been all spring and I was able to come out to Hardrock and do a bunch of the course making sure the markers and trash were all picked up with Donnie. I really needed that weekend. Hopefully Aug goes much better...
Caught up with Jerusha, Bob, Chris, Kari, Donnie, Porf, lots of friends at Hardrock 100, and a
Denver Trailrunners Sunday run this month in person so it was awesome
month on that front at least. It felt like we are back to normal, as long as the delta variant does not shut us down again.
Here are the total hours broken down by activity for the month.
Goals Check In
- Re- Qualify for the Hardrock lottery- signed up for Run Rabbit Run 100
- Average a Peak a week in 2021- Behind- about to throw in the towel on this idea
- Travel somewhere new for a race- Complete- Trip to North Carolina
- Run Coaching Certification- 55% done
- Read at least 30 books- Completed-30 books done so far....
- Sky Dive
- Leave the lower 48- Is it possible due to Covid?
- Travel somewhere I have never been if I don't leave the lower 48 Trip to JFK50 planned
- Keep the blog more updated- on track
- Backpacking on the Colorado Trail for 3-7 days
Pictures in July
