The Slump

What a slump I've been in for the past few weeks!  I know that all runners experience a slump at some point but it can be difficult to look at it as a short term problem when you're in the middle of one.  For me the problem seems to be three-fold: post-race time off, lack of a schedule due to a break from school, and the prospect of heading back overseas.  The post-race slump is pretty common and I almost fell prey to it once before following the Atlanta Marathon.  With no follow-up race planned and a sense of satisfaction following the Peachtree Road Race I felt I deserved a little bit of time off from running.  I had no intention of cutting out running altogether but I did cut back on my run days to three or four days a week instead of five or six.  I guess I got a little too comfortable with that routine.  Also, the school semester ended so I found myself with no set schedule to follow.  Telling myself that I could go work out any time of the day usually resulted in not working out at all or begrudgingly heading to the gym later in the day.  Finally, I've been looking into going back overseas (as a civilian) so that in my mind I feel that I should be taking advantage of my free time now before I find myself on the other side of the world.

 There's nothing wrong with a slump.  In fact it can be beneficial in some ways.  Taking a bit of time off to rest is good for the body and taking time off from running keeps me from getting burnt-out on this repetitive exercise.  The problem is when the time off becomes the norm.  I know I need to shake up my workout routine.  I need to do something different to make it interesting.  I love running but there are only a couple of places that I regularly go to run around here and I'm already bored with them.  When I run outside I run around the college.  When I run inside I run on the indoor track at the college.  Tuesday I decided to make a change and drove to the Clinton Nature Preserve again, a former haunt of mine that I haven't gone back to since I moved to a different town.  It was one of my more enjoyable runs over the course of the past several weeks.  Too bad it's 45 minutes away now.  I need to find new routes closer to home.  I also feel that I'm slowing down.  My past 10 runs or so have been slow ones and I'm worried that my fastest days are behind me.  I also realize that a large part of my problem may be mental.  Getting burnt-out on running would also result in slower times.  Changing things up may inevitably help my speed too. 

I should also really consider cross training.  If I'm away from running for a few days I get an itch to run and usually capitulate if even for a 30 minute run.  I need to hold out a bit longer.  Doing cross training for a couple of weeks will have me chomping at the bit to get back out there and run.  That's the feeling I need to recapture; an all-consuming desire to run.  Of course, all this becomes moot if I go back overseas.  I'm waiting to hear back from a couple of leads so it's really difficult to come up with a training schedule when you have no idea what your schedule will be like.  I know that if I do go back overseas that I'll have to tailor my workout plan and goals to fit a schedule that will likely consist of 12 hour days and may or may not include a gym to use.  But, that's no excuse to stop working out until then.

So, where to go from here?  Until I know for sure what my future holds for me I'm going to adjust my goals.  No pace goals or races planned or even any distance goals.  I'm scaling back my running to a minimum of twice a week and getting the rest of my cardio through cross training.  I'll also be focusing more on strength training which I can do at home as well as at the gym. After a couple of weeks of this I should be mentally and physically recovered.  The hard part will be coming out of the slump.  I can't make my slump routine become my normal routine.  With a little bit of motivation and inventiveness I plan to make it out of this slump a better runner.