Overtrained?

I can tell a major difference between the way I ran last year and the way I am running this year at the same mileage marks - and it really isn't a good difference. My long runs are feeling okay, instead of great, and my short runs are feeling long. Also? I am constantly feeling like I am dragging, and between Friday night and Monday morning, I sleep about 30 hours. That's all I do all weekend. I come home from my long run, nap all day, piddle around the house, eat, and go to bed. Get up Sunday, work out, nap, church, eat, piddle, sleep. This can't be that good for me.

So I started examining the reasons behind why I am so tired and my runs are dragging. The difference between this year and last year is that now, I am actually cross-training. I do boot camp twice a week, yoga once, and I try to swim and bike at least once each per week - on top of two training runs and a long run. Boot camp lasts only one more week, fortunately, but at the same time, I almost feel like if I am not working out so much then I am not going to burn as many calories and get to eat what I want, and I'm not going to improve my cardiovascular endurance and my muscular endurance. Am I give out because I'm not in good enough shape, or am I give out because I'm trying too hard to get into good shape?

Then there is also this interesting "exercise-induced inertia" - if I keep moving working out, I'll keep moving in other areas. For example, last Saturday night, I could not sit still. If I sit on the couch, I'll fall asleep. I had to get up every five minutes to clean something. The upside is my house is spotless, but the downside is here I am scrubbing the cooktop at 11 pm when I should probably give it up and get in bed.

Somehow I need to find a balance. I'm hoping that boot camp ending will help a little, but I need to get it into my head that I am a runner, and I run. I can do a little bit of other things to cross-train, but not to the point of derailing my running. I know in the back of my mind there's a triathlon spirit, pushing me through breathless swims and grueling bike workouts so that when my triathlon comes - and I hope it will - I'll be ready. But right now isn't the time to stress the biking and swimming, because it's not important to my running, which is the main focus here. It's 144 days until the Vegas Marathon, and if I'm tired at 8 miles, then I'm going to fall over before I see the finish line. We can't have that.

So how much is too much and how much is not enough? Where do I draw the line between cross-training and overtraining?

Viva La Off-Season

Running has a lot of benefits people don't tell you about. Sure, you've heard about bone density, muscle endurance, increasing your oxygen intake, weight loss... the ability to eat tons of ice cream and still look stick thin (assuming you were stick thin to begin with, but I digress). But I think there's one you don't often hear about:

Running, and the health benefits it gives you, causes you to want to keep that up. Running makes you healthy, and, in turn, you want to do other things that make you healthy.

I am really proud of all the positive changes I have made. I have stopped drinking soda, and mostly only drink water or tea and the occasional beer, wine, or latte (notice I said "occasional" - so not daily like I used to before I started running). I pretty much stopped eating meat except for special occasions and instead seek out soy protein, dairy, more vegetables, and grains to keep my body healthy from the inside out. I go to bed before 11 most nights, I don't drink very much when I go out, and I usually only watch interesting things on TV and not just crap to fill my time. I even started taking better care of my skin! And, best of all, I am not spending my off-season sitting on my butt in front of the TV eating everything in sight - tennis, weight lifting, walking, cycling, swimming, yoga, pilates. Trying lots of new things and loving every minute of it. I am even looking into fun things to do on my upcoming cruise that involve getting out and having some fun - can you imagine me on a zip line in the jungle? :o)

Weight A Minute

I have always liked to weight lift. Blame it on my 9th and 10th grade Girls' Weight Training classes: we'd do half a class of aerobics (to a tape, which is funny looking back on it!) and the other half was weights. I'll be honest here - they taught us more about how to do it than they did *why* we were doing it, what groups we were working, and how that would impact us in other physical endeavors (outside of a 80's Abs of Steel video). This is something I very much wish we had learned in school.

Yesterday I did my weight lifting at the good ol' JCA. I get my workouts from Weight Training for Runners, and I am currently doing the in-season training (just to get back up to speed on how to lift again, as it's been awhile.) Yesterday looked a little something like this:

* 30 min on the treadmill working on walking inclines
* Dumbell rows: 3 sets x 20 reps x 5 lbs
* Tricep kickbacks: 3 sets x 20 reps x 4 lbs
* Dumbell bench press: 3 sets x 20 reps x 7.5 lbs
* Lunges: 3 sets x 10 reps x 4 lbs (my quad was hurting, which was ODD for me)
* Leg press: 3 sets x 20 reps x 40 lbs
* Calf raises: 2 sets x 20 reps (it recommended a "calf raise machine" - what the heck is that?)
* 20 crunches (the ab cruncher machine thingie is a cruel mistress).

I am only doing two days a week at this point... I want to ease back into it now that I am at the end of my season, so that when I start my off season training in April I can do 3 days a week of lifting (and a new core training class I am super psyched about!)

Anyone else weight lift out there? Or are you like I usually am and consider "cross-training" to be synonymous with "12 ounce curls" only?