Overtraining

Now I've read about overtraining and I've watched it happen. It is not the number of miles you run or the number of hours you train. You can most likely train a whole lot harder than you ever have before. When I have seen it or experienced it in the past it has been from several recurring themes:

1. Never taking it easy. As a runner when your off day is an hour of biking or swimming and then a little lifting and your off season is less than a week you are flirting with burnout. Many very dedicated athletes train 40 hours a week but have a serious off season where their cortisol or adrenaline or whatever really gets a chance to rest.

2. School or work or personal life drama consume you. Attending a difficult engineering school caused my friends and I to stress out about important projects several times and performances to just plummet. 

3. Ramping up training too fast. Injuries happen this way too. One week you're running 30 miles a week, the next it's 50, and then 70 and then you get injured or feel tired all the time.

So train hard and take it easy!