The Fine Line: Balancing Training Intensity and Recovery in Running

Thank you mate, I overtrained for my first 60 miler last year because I was thinking like a caveman and had to put up with a knee injury throughout. I believed more is always better. In June I have a 120mi, and I’ve been training slightly better supplementing with lots of cross training but still with this dumb logic of smashing myself daily. I’m watching this right now and I can tell I’ve been overtraining, I can’t thank you enough. You could well have saved me from injury and worse.

Flashes up in my notifications just as I was thinking about forcing in an extra session 🤔

Amazing video, always a great day when Stephen posts

THIS, this video, Stephen, is without question the most useful video for me at the level I'm at. I really enjoy all of your content but so much of it is way above my current level of training/running but this one has really hit the spot. Just in time too as I'm about to tackle my most strenuous half marathon training schedule to date. I have taken so much from this one, thank you. And the thing I'm most pleased about is that I've been waiting for the day when I felt I could really relate to your excellent advice and content. Today is that day. Thank you. Mark

Thank you Stephen for all your great videos. Your content is worth GOLD.

Stephen, I am so grateful for these videos. What a privilege it is to receive this info from an Olympic athlete. I only wish I could have heard this sooner. I ran at a division 3 college and our conference was extremely competitive. Naturally, I wanted to do everything I could for our team to score in the conference meets and run super fast times, but what I didn't realize, was that I was pushing myself way too hard. I never raced well despite training harder than anyone else I knew, and I ended up with 3 stress fractures over the course of 1 year, essentially de-railing my senior year. Now that I'm in my post collegiate old man era, I more motivated than ever to train right and finally run a PR again after a year of injuries.

Its harder than it looks to diagnose overtraining. I stagnated for such a long time thinking I was overtraining, telling myself 'this hurts, exhausted, blah blah.' I was B.S-ing myself. Took a lot of self-reflection to come to this conclusion. So, I systematically upped my training (doubled) and then started to see improvements. I've been training at this new level for months, no burnout, so I can at least confirm to myself that my previous thinking was flawed. I can see elites or hyper-completives overdoing it, but mere mortals trick ourselves to do less

Thank you for taking the time to share all your wisdom! I can't stop learning from your videos. I see all my mistakes being answered in a simple yet concisely language and I can sense a small improvement in runnings, although I discovered your channel few weeks ago. Thank you!

Awesome content as always. Thank you so much!

WOW! Amazing video - SO glad I gave it a view, and happy to be a subscriber. Thank you so much for the high quality content.

Thankyou, your advice has helped me out in this regard already.

Amazing advice, thank you so much!

Great advice! Thanks Stephen!

Thanks Steven, have a nice weekend!!!

Such great wisdom. Monday I has 10x 400, tues paced a friend on a 5k time trial. I knew it was dumb and at 61 every day I have been feeling yuck. Just no kick in my day to day. But you gave the why.

Awesome content Stephen! Found your channel a few months ago. I’m also training for Berlin, targeting 2:28. I was searching for “breathing techniques” while running. In the case you haven’t cover that, maybe a good vid idea. Keep enjoying the mountains 🕺

Wow.. found myself in this a lot, thanks!

Amazing stuff!

Thank you for introducing the concept of supercompensation. That encourages me.

Ty so much. Recently completed marathon training plan but DNF the race. The more I think about it, I’m thinking that I actually only absorbed training up to around HM. You’re the only person I hear talking about absorbing training and it makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately I think my body just takes longer to absorb training. I’m on a bit of a quest to try and improve my absorption ability if possible. Ty again and God bless.