Building mileage too quickly
I get it. You’ve entered a race, you’re excited and you want to give yourself the best chance of doing well. You see other people’s training and start wondering whether you should be doing more. Suddenly, what felt like a sensible week becomes a few extra kilometres here, another run there and a much longer Sunday.
The motivation is there, but your body needs time to adapt. Feeling like you could run further doesn’t always mean you’re ready to keep adding more.
The problem is that doing more can feel productive, right up until you’re forced to stop. A rushed build can leave you exhausted, struggling to recover or dealing with an injury that interrupts the consistency you were trying to create.
Start from where you are
Your training should reflect what you’ve been managing consistently. The mileage you ran six months ago, your biggest-ever week or what someone else is posting on Strava won’t tell you what’s appropriate for you now.
Look at the whole picture too. Adding distance while also introducing faster sessions, more hills or extra strength work can make a week considerably harder, even if the mileage doesn’t look dramatically different.
Give yourself time
There’s no prize for reaching your biggest week as quickly as possible. I’d much rather see an athlete put together weeks of manageable, consistent training than rush towards a number and struggle to recover from it.
That means allowing easier weeks, taking recovery seriously and being willing to adjust. If you’re constantly tired, your usual runs feel harder or something keeps hurting, those are things to pay attention to.
Think beyond this week
When you’re training for a long race, it’s easy to feel that every run needs to prove you can cover the distance. You build that ability gradually, through training you can recover from and repeat.
That’s a big part of my role as a coach: helping you channel your enthusiasm into a build that makes sense for you, and sometimes giving you the confidence to do a little less.
Being motivated is a brilliant starting point. Give your body the time to catch up with your ambition.