Is fatigue physical or psychological?

In endurance sports, fatigue happens. At some point in the span of an endurance competitor's athletic life they will experience a fatigue that seems unexplainable. I've heard this from others before, they get to a race, they have a high level of fitness, their nutrition was spot on, they follow their race strategy but they developed an unexpected level of fatigue. As a result, their outcome wasn't quite what they had anticipated.

I have been there before too. Look at my Derby Marathon from this past spring, it happened just like described above. So what happened? A recent example was Nikki's marathon at Columbus. Nikki had developed an amazing level of fitness, we had worked out a nutritional plan and race strategy, but she ran slower than what she anticipated. (And by my calculations, she was fitter than what she set her goal time at.) So what happened?

If you know me, normally I would pull out the training plans and look at all the possible missteps. But in this off-season, we're stepping away from "the plan" and were learning to adapt.

We are looking at ways our mind may get in the way of our bodies. Whether it is in relation to our athletic performance or with our health and wellness, I want to explore it.

The question, "What causes fatigue?" has always been an important question to me. In exercise physiology we primarily study the metabolic causes of fatigue or performance, so it must be a physical phenomena, right?

Here's another quote from, "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why" that may open our mind to another possible solution:

Fatigue almost always comes as a surprise. It is as much a psychological condition as a physical one, and scientists have struggled without success to understand it." ... "There's nothing in the muscles or nerves or even the biochemistry of the body that would seem to predict or explain fatigue. Once fatigue sets in, though, it is almost impossible to recover from it under survival conditions. It is not just a matter of being tired. It's more like a spiritual collapse, and recovery requires more than food and rest."

"Following the explosive burst of activity that is sometimes required for survival, or in the panic stage when you're running or climbing or swimming, you're like a woman who's just given birth to a baby. You're depleted and wide open to fatigue. It may take weeks to recover; and if you're not taking care of yourself, that fatigue can lead to an inability to sleep, which in turn can result in a sudden psychological collapse. The physical and psychological factors rapidly erode each other, which is why it is so important to pace yourself, rest frequently, and stay hydrated. ..."

"A survival situation is a ticking clock: You have only so much stored energy (and water), and every time you exert yourself, you're using it up. The trick is to become extremely stingy with your scarce resources, balancing risk and reward, investing only in efforts that offer the biggest return."

So fatigue can be a physical and a psychological phenomena. It is common to train physically to manage fatigue, do we practice our ability to mentally manage fatigue? Can we?

My take on Nikki's marathon

She never mentioned it in her race report (which shows what kind of person she is) but I have to believe that fatigue the week prior to her Columbus race was a major issue. And I contributed a lot to that fatigue.

The week leading up to the race I was sick. I missed most the week of work and laid in bed and on the couch, dealing with a virus. The entire week Nikki took care of me, she even stayed at the emergency room until 4:00am on Wednesday night. At times leading up to the weekend she talked about staying home and not doing the race.

Here it was, Nikki's chance to be in the spotlight after a summer of supporting my triathlon efforts and she was taking care of me.

By the time the weekend came, I believe that even if she was physically ready, her mind was tired from lack of sleep and worry.

Last thought

Practicing how to manage the mental aspects of fatigue is something to consider. How do you do that? I'm not sure. Maybe it has something to do with balance, which I talked about in my last post?

The plan, reality, emotions and adaptability.

This time of year is the period that triathletes like to sit back and ask themselves, "What am I going to do next year?" They schedule their races and then they look at their training plan, figuring out how to get to those races with the best fitness possible.

The last month has been a period for me to sit back and reestablish a level of balance in my life that hasn't existed for the last 16 months (about the time Nikki and I moved back to Kentucky). There are areas that need a little balancing out to create a more harmonious wellness in my own mind. Some of the action steps I'm trying to take include:

1. personal awareness and involvement in my spiritual life
2. increased attention to Nikki and I's relationship (outside of work and training)
3. dedicating time to quiet and calm - peace
4. raising awareness of my emotional balance

I haven't been able to act in all these areas yet, but hopefully there will be patterns of habit that I can facilitate and develop that will impact my future self in a positive way.

So what does all of this have to do with training and triathlon? I personally believe it has a lot to do with it. The one thing that I fell short on in 2005 and 2006 was having a sound mind ready for peak performance. The obstacles that got in my way were things like: ego, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, lack of humility, etc.

The numbers, the goal, the outcome, these are things that became the obsession which, for me, lead to an inability to manage my mind optimally.

As I work on these things, I like to increase my reading list too. Reading is one thing that helps me bring awareness to my own thought patterns, as long as I'm reading the right titles. (note: if you have any good ones, let me know).

Currently I'm reading a book titled "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why" by Laurence Gonzales. It is an interesting book that talks about different aspects of survival and why some people make really poor choices when faced with a dangerous situation, even if they know better. Here's a section I'd like to share:

page 85

"we all make powerful models of the future. The world we imagine seems as real as the ones we've experienced. We suffuse the model with the emotional values of past realities. And in the thrall of that vision (call it "the plan," writ large), we go forth and take action. If things don't go according to the plan, revising such a robust model may be difficult. In an environment that has high objective hazards, the longer it takes to dislodge the imagined world in favor of the real one, the greater the risk. In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It's a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan too."

There are two good lessons here for the triathlete or runner:

1. As you create your annual training plan, are you creating a plan based on what you hope / wish you were (an imagined reality) or are you basing it upon what your current level of experience and ability actually is?

That ability to self-assess our abilities is very difficult, especially when projecting ourselves into the future. My assumption or guess is that the average triathlete assumes they can handle 20% more training stress than they can actually manage. And some assume way more than that.

2. Can you adapt? In survival, the plan is great but it is the ability to adapt that keeps a person alive. Remember that the plan is meant to be fluid and not concrete.

This seems easy to comprehend from a distance, but what do you do when you're in the middle of the season and the wheels start to come off? Do you possess the emotional maturity to understand what is going on around you? Can you handle the mental stress of having to change your plan or your goals?

The off-season is a great time to plan for next season. I also believe that it is a great time to develop the abilities you need to be more adaptable. What does it take to be a more adaptable person? I'm not completely sure, but I'm going to be working on balancing out certain areas of my life. When one thing dominates your life, mind and spirit, it becomes difficult to adapt at times of high stress. Just remember Norman Stadler trying to adapt to his flat tire at Ironman Hawaii in 2005.

As a last thought on this, check out this video of Chris McCormack talking about adapting during the 2005 Hawaii race, remembering he hadn't been able to adapt well in his previous tries at Kona. Interesting thoughts. And I agree that we all could learn lessons from Mark Allen in this area.

Runovia - Thoughts from the winner (Dean).

I know that the race is a long time in the past. I have actually been thinking about what my off season is going to be like a lot lately, but before I let the race fade into the past, I thought I'd share some thoughts that Dean Hewson shared with me. I was glad that Dean sent me an email message because it allowed me to pass a couple thoughts by him. Dean is the one person in the race that had some depth to his Ironman experience, Runovia was his 9th Ironman distance race, so his experience allowed me to gain some perspective on my own race.

He said that I could share his thoughts, but did give this one caveat

"The only caveat is that I wouldn't suggest others take that approach in their first few years of Ironman racing. I would suggest a completely different approach for those athletes. But, if they have lots of experience at the distance, have figured out their nutrition, have done another Ironman the same year (so they know they have the endurance to cover the distance), and are stuck at a performance plateau, they may glean something helpful from it."

Here's his thoughts:

"Before signing up for the Runovia Full-Distance Triathlon (Kentucky), my 9th Ironman, I learned a few Ironman lessons the hard way.

I've done a 5 hour marathon suffer-fest in Hawaii, where crawling to the finish truly became an option. I've been injected with 6 bags of IV after finishing IM Wisconsin. Oh, and my friend, Robin, never misses an opportunity to tell people that she once, post-IM Lake Placid, changed me into dry clothes, including my underwear, because I couldn't do it myself.

These experiences have given me respect for the distance. Or should I say, "fear for the distance." I don't want to go through that again. Funny, neither does Robin.

This year, I dedicated myself to Ironman UK. I made the kinds of sacrifices many non-athletes do not understand -- and I had a solid race and a wonderful time. But I left England unfulfilled and a little disappointed.

After some analysis and testing, I concluded that the problem was probably mental. Maybe this fear-for-the-distance thing was something I needed to overcome.

When I reviewed my long term triathlon goals, two related goals stood out: "To (use sport to) develop a process for helping others be who they want to be" and "To learn how to overcome obstacles, so I can help others do the same."

"Well then, Dean," I said, "If you are going to move closer to your goal of creating a process for helping others overcome obstacles, you’d better be able to overcome them yourself!"

Suddenly, this race took on new importance.

I brainstormed my specific fears. I labeled my obstacles. I even gave names, Mr. Wimp, Mr. Happy, and Mr. Friendly (OK, I promise I'll let Paula name our next child) to the personality traits that seem to show up uninvited on race day to re-enforce the very real brick wall I had constructed.

"Come on," they'd say. "All you can ask of yourself is to do your very best."

This time, I felt that my best effort would not be good enough. I needed to really race this thing and go beyond my self-imposed limitations. I needed to break through that fear.

My goal for the race became, "To maintain a fighting spirit with a sharp focus on the present moment (especially on the bike)." No thinking about the swim during the bike. No worrying about the run. No writing race reports in my head or making excuses for myself -- just spend as much of the day as possible focusing on the controllables and the immediate task at hand.

I removed my power meter, left my heart rate monitor at home, took the easy "bail-out" gears off my bike, and mentally rehearsed my Ironman twice a day for two weeks.

Unfortunately, race morning brought severe thunderstorms and tornados. We would eventually get 8-11 inches of rain that Saturday. There was no way we would be swimming with all that lightning. So the race director postponed the race until Sunday, warning us that we may not have any volunteers or medical support on hand the next day.

He was right. Sunday came complete with a few lonely card tables along the side of the road for self-serve aid stations, and the race began with a few handfuls of athletes heading into the debris-filled Lake Barkley.

Since the number of starters was reduced, the Ironman and half-Ironman competitors swam together. I decided to start fast and try to catch onto someone in the half for a ride around the first loop of the swim. But after a couple hundred meters, I realized that I was on my own... yes, me, leading an Ironman!

Go away, Mr. Wimp. I don't care if you don't think I should be leading an Ironman. I'm not playing with you today! Oh, and then Mr. Happy stopped by at the end of the first swim-loop to wave to Maggie and Paula on shore, but thankfully, Mr. I'm-Leading-an-Ironman, returned to kick him back to the beach where he belonged.

I'll spare you the details of the bike, other than to say that I was so pleased with having pushed through a very tough bike course, that I contemplated dropping out of the race and going home with my newly found confidence in hand. That would be a first! But there was another first I was after.

When I hit the run, I realized that I still had something in my legs, and I was ready to run a solid marathon on my way to the overall win and, most importantly, to a personal breakthrough.

Other than the fact that it feels right, I’m still not sure if I have a clear understanding of why I do this sport. In fact, my legs were asking me that same question this morning. But I’m working on it, and I feel like I got a little closer this weekend."

Thanks Dean.


Dean on the bike.


Dean with his daughter - prerace.

Runovia - The Race Report.

The race is now a little over a week in the past so it is time to wrap up my thoughts on the race. There are already two posts, one about the experience and a second about facing mental challenges on the bike. This post will be dedicated to a report on the race. How did I do? How do I feel about how I did?

The swim.

There wasn't much doubt about my swim fitness going into the race - I didn't have any. That happens when you swim 1 time a week on average over the summer. (Not that I swam more prior to that because I didn't. I only swam a couple times over the winter months.) There wasn't much anxiety about the swim despite my lack of training. I had been able to develop a pretty good acceptance of the fact that my only swim goal was to get through the swim.

Walking onto the beach after my second loop I realized that adding some swim workouts to my schedule would be important for 2007. I made my little comment to Nikki and headed to the changing room.

The one thing that I noticed while in the water, but didn't realize the impact until I started changing was how cold the water was. I was shivering so much trying to change my clothes that getting my wetsuit off wasn't exactly easy. Neither was getting on my cycling jersey.

Later on in the race, I was able to talk to Dean Hewson while running. It made me feel better when he told me that his swim time was about 10 minutes slower than his IM UK time that he had just completed five weeks earlier. A small consolation anyway.

Swim time: 1:27:21

The Bike.



The bike was somewhat similar to the swim, in that I knew I had to be conservative with my riding approach. The difference with the bike was that I had been training and riding consistently over the summer. The key words though are "over the summer". Due to many factors, prior to the Horsey Hundred in May, I had not put in more than a few hundred miles total since September of '04. So even though I had been riding a lot this past summer, I didn't feel like I should expect to ride an outstanding ironman bike leg - "Save it for the run", was my motto.

I've already posted about the mental challenges I faced on the bike, but in the transition area heading out to the run, I felt extremely positive. "That was the best 112 mile ride I'd ever had", I told myself. (Actually my bike computer said 113.x, so I wasn't sure how far it was.)

The course was a challenging course, but not impossible. From the elevation chart you can tell that the terrain was rolling throughout the entire ride. The greatest thing about the bike course was that the road we did most of our riding had just been paved that week. That made the roads feel fast. Jeff, Beth and I rode a loop of the Ironman Wisconsin course the Saturday before the IMMOO, which was two weeks before Runovia. The courses seemed very similar in difficulty, although Wisconsin's course had more turns and twists where Runovia was pretty much straight ahead.

Bike time: 6:40:17

The Run.



This is the one leg that I was ready for, mentally and physically. But to be honest, once I showed up to the race and saw the course, I made some adjustments to my expectations.

I have completed 7 marathons over the years and only one marathon course compares to the difficulty that this course presented - The Tecumseh Trail Marathon. Yep - a trail marathon. The Runovia run course made the Derby Marathon and The Flying Pig look like a track meet, but the key to facing the challenge for me was knowing how fit and prepared I was for the run.

If you look at the elevation chart you can see that the run begins with a two mile climb. For those of you Todd's Road Stumblers', the climb was very similar to Pit Bull. I'm not sure how long Pit Bull is, but the the grade was similar. There wasn't another two mile climb on the course, but there was definitely more hills. And we had to run each one 5 times!

The great thing about doing 5 laps was that for the first time during the race, I actually got to see some people and talk to someone. Dean (the race leader) was a couple loops ahead of Brad and I, but we were all running about same pace, so I had a couple conversations. What a relief!

Even though the course was challenging, I felt good on the run. There was never a moment of despair or fear, just feelings of strength. What a great way to feel during my first irondistance triathlon run leg. Of course my time was slower than I anticipated, but I still believe in the training principles I used to prepare for the run portion of this race. I was also uplifted by Nikki's comments regarding the run course. I'm also thankful that she didn't share those comments with me after her Saturday run. I knew the run would be a challenge. But having known how much it slowed her down prior to doing it myself might have made the bike even more challenging mentally.

Run time: 4:14:32

My last thoughts about Runovia

I am incredibly happy that I completed the distance, especially with all the reasons and excuses I could have come up with to not do the race. As the excitement of the race wears off and I begin to plan for 2007 (49 weeks to IMMOO), I know to be a better long distance triathlete, I have to:

1. make swimming a part of my schedule
2. continue to build my endurance on the bike
3. improve my ability to maintain an "upper-steady" effort on the run
4. spend more time on the mental characteristics that are required
5. improve my overall nutritional intake (i.e. eat like Nikki - less junk)

Links:

- Todd's (race director) Race Report
- Runovia Full Distance Results
- Runovia Half Distance Results