RTTC #211 What to Do When Your Running Feels Worse Than It Did Months Ago

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali breaks down one of the most frustrating experiences for runners…when your pace slows down and your stamina feels worse despite months of training. 

She explains why this is incredibly common, especially for slow, back-of-the-pack runDisney runners, and why it’s usually not a sign that you’re failing, but a signal that something needs to change. 

From ruling out medical issues like iron deficiency, to addressing under-fueling, to the most common culprit of all…training too hard in the wrong places…

Dr. Ali walks you through how runners accidentally trap themselves in the “gray zone” where nothing improves. 

She shows how pushing harder actually makes things worse, and how pulling back, slowing down, and training with purpose is what ultimately leads to better endurance, faster paces, and a stronger race day experience.

Learn more about Stronger. Faster. Finisher. !

Ready to cross the finish line stronger, faster, and prouder at your next runDisney race? 

Get personalized support, smarter training, and strategies designed specifically for slow, back-of-the-pack or injury-prone runners who want to build a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, have time for character photos and energy to enjoy the Disney Parks. Learn more about the Stronger. Faster. Finisher. Program today and be the first to know when doors open!

Free Resources

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• Check out FREE training plans for injury-prone runDisney runners on my website. 
• Book a Free 30 minute Call with me if you're wondering how you should train and if working together makes sense.
  
  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about what to do when your running feels worse than it did months ago. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for injury-prone Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Allie, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong without feeling broken or held together with KT tape as they cross the finish line. So I will get into this in just a second. I am currently wearing my Springtime Surprise shirt from 2023 in preparation for Springtime Surprise Race Weekend. At the time of recording this, it's still a couple of weeks away, but let's get in the mood. I also just booked, booked is, you know, I keep saying that phrase, but I guess registered is the better phrase. I just registered for a 10K in September, September 27th, that I'm going to use for a future proof of time. Now, if you are new here, welcome. I recommend when you're looking to do a proof of time race, meaning you're looking to do a race that you will use the finishing time as a proof of time for your Run Disney races. When you're doing that, I do recommend that you choose the shortest race distance that will qualify for the race that you're planning to do. So I typically do half marathon. So I'm going to do a 10K race to use that for a half marathon. I also could use a 10-miler, a half marathon, or a full marathon. I, however, being on the slower side, I've actually never done a proof of time race before. I've never felt like I needed to. My pace is comfortable for me. Would I like to get a little faster? Sure. I yeah, I'm not looking for crazy, crazy numbers. Basically, for my 10K, I am looking to just squeak by and get the slowest, fastest appropriate time, right? And off the top of my head, I don't remember what that is for a half marathon. But if you're doing like a full marathon to get a proof of time, I recommend doing the shortest distance. So that would be a 10 miler. Now, some runners will say, don't do that because then you have to do it like a calculation and it's not like a direct one-to-one. Sure. But go and do the calculation. It's it's typically based off the McMillan calculation. You can go and Google that and find out how fast you need to run on the 10K, the 10 mile or half marathon for the race distance that you're doing. The reason I recommend doing it this way is because then it's less stressful on your body and you have, you could have more time to work on it. So right now at the time of recording this, this is the beginning of April, and I have scheduled this race for September 27th. Could I have done one in June and still technically had the appropriate timeline to do a 10K race based on my training plans? Absolutely. I absolutely could have. But why not give myself that extra time? So now, since I'm doing the springtime surprise challenge, I'm training up to 10 miles. So now I'm recycling miles afterward. And what do I mean by recycling miles? I mean that I've already trained up to being able to do a 10 mile distance. My race distance in September is going to be 6.2 miles. I'm already beyond that. So I don't need to worry about training up to a 10K. I'm already there. So now I just get to work on getting faster. So you've probably heard me say, and if you've downloaded my training plans, you have seen in my training plans, I recommend not doing the full distance of the race in training. And I don't recommend for sure going beyond that. However, when you've already trained up to or surpassed the race distance, you can do things differently. Like when I'm talking about just going to race distance, well, that's for somebody new to this, somebody who hasn't done these miles pain-free yet, somebody who hadn't been training and who is actively training for this. So that probably sounded confusing. Let me back up. When I'm doing this 10K, when I'm doing this 10K training, so I've already mapped it out. The official 10K training is gonna start somewhere in August. I think it's like August 3rd. Don't quote me on that. But it's it's about eight weeks before my race. So between April 19th, which is the day of Springtime Surprise 10 Miler, I will do two weeks of rest and recovery. And then, so that brings me to, let's just call it May 1st, just for conversation's sake. Then I have eight weeks before official training starts, and I can do paced training, paced long runs. I can go beyond race distance, do them fast, and then tone it down for the eight weeks leading up to the race. So between May 1st and let's call it August 1st, because remember, I don't remember the exact dates. The exact dates don't matter. You look at the calendar for your race. But between May 1st and August 1st, that's all of May, all of June, all of July, I have 12 weeks to basically, I could go to 10 miles again if I wanted. I don't think I have it trained up that high. I think the highest I'm gonna go is eight miles, but I'm gonna work on paced long runs and speed and some strength. And I can do that for those 12 weeks because that will be my build phase. But I don't need to recycle, excuse me, I don't need to do new miles. I'm just recycling miles, right? Because I'm not getting out of shape from what I just trained for the 10 miler. But then once official training starts for the 10K, which is August 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, I'm not going beyond race distance. I'm not doing it. It's training up to the 70, 80% of race distance and calling it a day. But I can go beyond it or I can do faster long runs. I call them paced long runs when it's that way for clarity's sake. So I'm I'm using different terms because I they are different workouts. Remember, purposeful running, the purpose in those three months is get faster. And then in training, the purpose is be trained for that 10K, but don't be exhausted. I've had some runners tell me or ask me, well, why don't you just keep going? If you're doing that for three months and you're training faster and you're doing these long runs faster, paced long runs, why not just keep going? Because by the time I get to race weekend for this 10K, if I've been doing that for four or five months, I'm gonna be exhausted. And that leads me into this week's podcast episode. I don't want to be exhausted because when I'm exhausted, I'm going to start going slower. So I saw on Facebook just recently because somebody was asking about it for springtime surprise. And I'm gonna read it here. It's from one of the Run Disney groups, and it says, My training is going backwards. I'm running slower and with less stamina than I was four months ago. And they're specifically asking, like, what's gonna happen if I give it my all and I bonk at mile seven of the race. I don't want that to happen for my proof of time. I know I'm ready for the 10-miler and everything. And so I'm not talking about that for me now. But this conversation of I'm getting slower and my stamina is worse is something I see every day. Every day somebody is saying that on the internet or to me directly. What do I do? And we don't want that to happen. So here we go with what to do. So, first of all, go check to see medically am I stable? Because there are medical reasons that your stamina and your running pace could be getting worse. The top ones that I'm thinking of are iron and ferritin, specifically in women, but it can affect all humans. You typically see it with female runners. Go see your healthcare provider and get a wellness check. Make sure everything is going well medically, that you are not deficient in a vitamin, a mineral, iron. You know, check your platelet count, check your red count, red blood cell count, white blood cell count. Are you ill? Do you have a fever? Right? Go get a wellness check. That's that's the first step. Because if something is going wonky, if something is not right, first go check health. Because it could be as simple as you need iron, you need your ferritin numbers to be better, right? I can't do that for you. And any amount of training and running and hydrating and fueling, like on course fueling, not going to help. You need to go get checked out and see what you can do. Could you take a supplement? Could you eat something to help with whatever is missing? I don't know. Talk to your healthcare provider about that. I don't give guidance on that. You need to talk to your healthcare provider about that. But let's say you did go check your healthcare provider and they said everything looks great. All your numbers are normal. Keep going. Okay. Now, of course, caveat. There are some people who the doctor says everything looks normal. If you still think it's a health-related thing, go get a second opinion because you never know what they actually checked. Did they check everything that they could have? Sometimes people leave things off because they are thinking horses, not zebras, right? Like they're thinking the most common things that could go wrong. So I, but I don't want to get into that. You know your body best. I do not know your body best. So you go get all of the opinions you need. But let's say everything actually is physically okay. Medically, you are good. Now what? The most common reasons I see runners start slowing down, stamina being worse, are they either pushing themselves too hard or they are not fueling themselves appropriately. Okay. So I'm going to address this not fueling appropriately first, because that's not going to be the full part of this episode. So I'll talk about the pushing yourself too hard first. So fueling. Your body needs fuel to go. If there's no gas in the tank, there is no go. If Allie doesn't have caffeine and carbs, she is not feeling good on a run. Her run is slow, her stamina feels worse, worse, her heart rate is through the roof. Okay? Me. I'm talking about me and the third person. It will happen to you as well. So you need to make sure that you are fueling with carbs. If you don't know what a carb is, carbohydrates, work with a coach or Google what are examples of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are sugars. They are either simple carbs or complex carbs based on how they metabolize in your body. Simple carbs are things like sugars, sweets, uh, some breads, some pastas. Complex carbs are things that take longer to break down. It's literally based on the chemical makeup of the food item, and it takes longer to break down. Most people think of those as starchy things like a baked potato, um, vegetables, fruits, some grains, some pastas. Okay. You need to be fueling with carbohydrates in order to have any oomph in your in your self, any giddy up in your go. So you need to be fueling adequately. Now, one thing that will affect how you are fueling that is relatively recent in the media, and it's not new, but it is because it has become more readily accessible. So we're seeing it in more and more people. GLP ones. Those will significantly reduce how much you can take in, how much you can eat, how often you eat, and just overall how you're feeling. GLP ones make you lose a lot of weight fast. And that can be a great thing. It doesn't always balance out with your running and stamina goals. I've had a family member, I've actually had two family members that I know of who are on GLP ones or have been on GLP ones, and they lost a significant significant amount of weight in the appropriate timing. In addition to fat loss, they also lost muscle mass. So they also didn't have much oomph in them because their body is not designating what is getting lost. It's not fat only, but they also had significantly less appetite. So they weren't eating as much, which is part of the goal. But that doesn't work very well when you have a goal for running. You need to have the endurance to go. And part of getting that endurance is with what you're eating, right? And so if you can't eat because you don't have much of a temper uh temperature, if you don't have much of an appetite, you're not going to be eating much. And you just aren't going to have the energy to do anything. Okay. So you do need to take those things into consideration. But the next thing that I see, this is the most common reason, is runners are actually pushing themselves too much. They're pushing themselves too much to recover. And so then after months and months and months of doing that, they go slower and slower. Their stamina is worse, their heart rate is through the roof, their breathing rate has increased, and they are just not feeling it. They're exhausted all of the time, especially when they work out, and they are noticing that they are getting slower. And they're like, what the heck? Like, I am doing all of the things I'm doing, all of the workouts, and I'm, I feel like I'm doing a lot. And then I look at my paces and my pace just keeps getting worse. But I feel like I should be hitting faster numbers. And so I've talked about the gray zone, right? Where all of your paces are kind of muddled. And when you push so hard, you feel like you are doing a hard pace. You feel like you're in the green, right? And let me back up a second in case anybody hasn't heard of my gray zone. So think of your paces on a spectrum. Pink is easy peasy lemon squeezy. Green is hard, hard, hard. And if you don't know, pink and green, when they're mixed together, they make gray. So we want very distinct paces for our runs. We are running with purpose. Our long runs are slow and pink. Our speed workouts are short and green and fast. So we are pushing hard, going green, green means go, right? And keeping things hard and fast on the short workouts. That's the purpose. And on our long runs, we are keeping it easy and pink. When our pink easy runs start getting faster than our easy pace, and I'm not talking like you've actually pace tested and your actual easy pace is faster. It's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you've tested your easy pace. For conversation's sake, let's say your easy pace is 16 minutes per mile. Okay. But every time you go on a long run, you're doing 15 minutes per mile. Okay. Let's say your hard pace is 11 minutes per mile. And on your short hard workouts, those are actually more like 12 minutes per mile. So now on your easy long run, you're going a minute per mile faster, which sounds great. Run D Run Disney even recommends in order to cross the finish line, they recommend training at a 15 minute per mile pace. That sounds great in theory. And many runners will be like, oh, this is great. I'm running 15 minute per mile paces. This is going to be no problem when race day comes along. And I'm also doing these faster workouts at 12 minutes per mile. That's three whole minutes per mile faster. That's incredible. But what you see is your easy pace, where your easy pace is actually 16 minutes per mile, but on your long run, you're doing 15. So it's a whole minute per mile faster than your easy pace. So it's not quite pink anymore. It's getting more into the gray. And then your short speed workout pace, well, that's 12 minutes per mile, which is fast, right? Compared to your 15, like three minutes per mile faster, killer. Great, so much faster. But your actual tested pace is 11 minutes per mile, a whole minute faster than that. But on your fast speed workouts, you're only hitting 12. So that's in the gray, not in the green yet. So see, you're going faster during those short speed workouts, but not fast enough to actually get faster. Because in order to get faster, you have to reach and sustain that hard pace, or reach and surpass that hard pace. Right? You have to reach that 11 minute per mile pace and keep it for the workout. Or you need to reach and go past it and start getting into 10 minutes and 50 seconds, 10 minutes and 45 seconds, 10 minutes and 30 seconds, and so on and so forth. So that you surpass and get faster than that 11 minute per mile hard pace. But you can't do that. And your 12 minute per mile hard pace feels hard. Excuse me, your 12 minute per mile speed workout pace feels hard and it looks faster. But because you've been going 15 minute per mile pace on your long runs, that's a minute per mile faster than your easy pace. And so you aren't going easy enough to actually conserve energy to push your limits on the speed workout days. And then if you keep doing that enough, like this person, let's say over four months, now your easy long run is getting slower and slower. Now you're actually going to that 16 minute per mile pace, but it doesn't feel easy anymore. Your heart rate is 10 to 15 beats per minute faster on your long run. It's taking longer for that heart rate to come back down after you finish the run. And now you're hitting 13 minute per mile paces on the speed workouts. You're getting nowhere near those 11s. And that 13 minute per mile pace, you're hitting max heart rate, but you're nowhere near what you used to be. And it's because all of your paces have just been in that middle, in that gray zone, and your body is on overload. You've been pushing and pushing and pushing, but not reaping the benefit. So one of the best comparisons I can think of is a knot. Have you ever had something in a knot? Like I ropes, this happens to all the time. Like, so growing up, um, my dad's a big sailboat person. He has a 17 foot cap boat. It's large enough to hold six adults, but it's small enough that it can be sailed by one person. It's a really good size sailboat for people who like sailing and like having, you know, the family or friends or whatever around on it. So I am not much of an ocean person. I am not much of a boat person. I get incredibly seasick. However, I grew up doing these sailboat trips every weekend all summer until I could essentially drive away and not have to go. Um, or like work in the summer. I would be working on Saturday instead. So anyway, growing up, I learned to tie a bunch of different knots. Don't ask me to tie any knots anymore. I don't remember a single one of them. But you you have to tie knots sailing in a very specific manner because it cannot get caught up, right? Like it has to be able to hold tight, but it also has to be released when you want it to be released. And so I learned how to tie these knots. And now I know how to release a knot without having to cut the rope. And you may notice that your cords, like your charging cable for your phone, maybe it gets tied up and you start trying to unravel it. And same thing like those sailing knots, the harder you pull that knot to undo it, the tighter it gets. But when you relax it, you relax the pull, you start loosening things up, then you can gently release that knot. But the harder you pull, the tighter it gets, and the more likely you're just gonna have to cut that knot off completely and you have lost some of your rope. You can't do that on a sailboat because if you lose that, I mean, you might even just lose your sail and then you're out of control. But that's what's happening every time you're pushing your boundaries, especially on the long run. Right? Like could you still finish a race and feel pretty good not doing speed workouts and just doing long, easy or maintenance runs? Absolutely. You absolutely can, but you can't stay feeling well, feeling like things are going nicely and your stamina is picking up and you're about to cross the finish line. You can't do that if you push too hard on those long, easy runs. You have to tone it back. Stop pulling that knot tighter, relax, let it loosen up, and then you can gently unfold that knot. Stop pushing your easy runs, your long runs faster and faster, harder and harder, because you will go backwards. You will start getting slower, you will start feeling like your stamina is worse, you will start feeling like you're breathing heavier, and you will start feeling like your heart rate is just going through the roof and taking longer to come down because you're overworking it. You're pushing too much. Tone it back so that you're you can catch up again.