The first two marathons I ran were miserable. I arrived at the starting line (note: I said STARTING line) injured and fatigued. Staring down 26.2 miles under such conditions is depressing. Both races took me far longer to run and recover from than expected. I had clearly overtrained. Since then, I’ve come to realize that, unlike elite athletes and those with a lot of natural talent, my body doesn’t respond to high-mileage training schedules.

So for my third marathon, I made up my own schedule which basically involved running 6 or 7 miles every other day during the week and an increasingly longer run each weekend. My longest run was the typcial 20 miles recommended by pros. Oh, and I crammed it all into 10 weeks. 

I felt good and strong going into the race and was astounded when I took a whopping 45 minutes off my first marathon time and nearly 30 minutes off my 2nd marathon time . . . and on a far hillier course to boot.  Dont’ get me wrong: I never have been and never will be fast.  But I finally cracked the code on reaching my full potential in this sport.

Four days after the marathon, I was out running again. So my recovery was speedier too.

Overtraining is easy to do, especially when you’re new and you use one of those nifty one-size-fits-all training schedules. They’re a great starting point for all of us, but novices should feel free to adjust and pull back on them when they start encountering injuries, fatigue, etc. Trust me, it’s way better to be undertrained than overtrained. And that goes for all sports.

 About.com does a good job of explaining what overtraining is, how to avoid it and how to recover from it. Take a look here and here.