How Tired Should I Be After Long Runs

Audio Transcript

Coach Jeff: Today’s question is going to come from Matt. Matt asked, “How tired should I be after my long runs? These days my weekly mileage is between 40 and 45 miles and my Sunday long runs are between 14 and 16 miles. Leg wise, I feel absolutely fine and have no problems dealing with the harder workouts the following Tuesday, but I do find myself a bit more tired during the day than I would like. For example, I find myself fancying a nap and generally feel aware that I’ve expanded some energy. I do not feel that way on Tuesdays or Thursdays even after harder workouts involve nine or ten miles, any thoughts? How would you describe what the state of fatigue should be post long run?”

Matt, this is a great question. It’s definitely going to be pretty individual, but it’s definitely something that a lot of runners have. How tired should I be after certain workouts, that kind of thing? I have the similar experience to you. After my long runs, I tend to be a little bit more tired and generally need, like you said, not leg wise, but generally fatigued where I feel I need a nap. I don’t know that there’s any necessarily real science behind it. I think physiologically, obviously you’re out there for a significantly longer amount of time.

For example, on Tuesdays and Thursdays you said sometimes your workouts can be nine or ten miles in total, but when you look at obviously how fast you’re doing them and then that there’s rest in between, so maybe you’re only running hard for half of that and then you include more rep and cool down, what ends up happening is that, it’s a significantly less time, if not half the time that you’re on your feet actually running compared to what you might be on your Sunday long run. I’ve always thought that was the contributor to why I felt a little bit more tired on those long run days or fatigued, than I do on workout days.

The other factor might be that, we have to remember that running does not occur on isolation. Our workouts, our long runs, et cetera, all occur within the idea of everything else going on around us. During the week, I’ve always found that I accumulate stress and fatigue as the week goes on. Mondays and Tuesdays I’m usually not too bad, I’m getting back in that work groove. Wednesday and Thursday, I’ll start to feel a little tired from work and stress and things that may happen during the week and then Friday or Saturday is when things culminate. For me, I’ve always felt the most tired Saturdays and Sunday, because that’s stress of the week, the stress of all the workouts, the work, family life in general builds upon you and so sometimes Sunday, even if you weren’t running long, might be that day that your body needs to recover anyway.

I think that that could be the reason, but I also think regardless if that’s the reason or not, it’s important to keep in mind, regardless of what you’re training for, regardless of what you’re training how you feel, that running does not occur in a vacuum. We have to factor in everything that happens in our life, in our week, when we go to do workouts. If we’ve had a really stressful day at work and then you have a workout that evening or even the next morning, then you can expect that you’re going to feel your best for that workout and that’s okay. Not every workout has to be the best workout you’ve done.

As long as you’re putting in the work, you’re going to get better and you’re going to make improvements and that’s what training is all about. Making small consistent improvements so that way on race day, you can prove your fitness. You don’t need to prove how fit you are during a workout. You need to get a little bit better and progress and that way on race day, you can be the best version of yourself for that particular day. I think that’s important to keep in mind.

Other than that, I don’t think there’s a lot you can do. Give your body the rest it needs. If you do need to take a nap and you have the time and the availability, definitely feel you can do that and don’t worry that it’s somehow hurting you, I think that’s going a little bit of attention. I think that’s what separates elite runners and professional runners from us every day runners and people that are trying to fit in as much running as they can around work, life, et cetera is that, elite runners build their lives around taking naps, doing their recovery, that kind of thing. Whereas most adult runners, most of us are trying to do whatever we can. If we can get in the run, that’s great. If there’s a time for a nap, that’s bonus cherry frosting on the cake kind of thing. If you have the availability, don’t hesitate to give yourself a nap, but it’s not something that I’d worry about.

in terms of how … I want to address this really quick is, how tired should you feel after any particular workout? That’s an important question because for new runners and even experienced runners, if you want to get better and you want to improve, which is probably why you’re listening to this podcast, there’s always that delicate balance between doing enough and doing too much because that’s the line we want to ride. We want to do as much as we can without going overboard or over training, so that begs a question, how tired should I be?

The answer to that question goes back to what I said a couple of minutes ago about not every workout has to prove how fit you are. You don’t have to show up every day and crush your workout and run it better than you ever have and it’d be the most phenomenon thing that you’ve done. All you need to do is take small measureable steps each day. With that said, on a scale of one to ten, not every workout should feel like a nine or a ten. You shouldn’t come home and not be able to move, not be able to walk, not be able to get out of bed, something crazy like that. That’s probably taking it over board.

You can have those sessions once in a while, I think that’s good. Maybe once every month or a month and a half or two, you have one of those killer workouts where you attack it and you feel good and you go after it. That’s okay, but you should not feel that way after every workout. If that’s the case, then you’re probably pushing yourself too hard and that could be of your own accord or you’re pushing yourself too hard or it could be that you’re trying to follow a training plan that’s too difficult for you. I find that a lot with people that are using [gold times 00:06:40] as their training schedule. They say, well, I want to run a 3:45 Marathon, I go and find a 3:45 marathon plan or that’s how I set my paces up.

This is obviously a much deeper discussion. We’ve done some webinars on this and stuff, but I find those are the people that tend to extend themselves too much and finish every workout feeling like it was an eight, nine, or ten effort and feeling like they’re extremely tired after every workout. Whereas a more efficient approach is to be may be in that six to eight range on a scale of one to ten. Where every workout is tough, but does not leave you lying on the floor, kind of thing.

Yes, how tired should you be after your long run days, workout days? On a scale of one to ten, ideally between a six and an eight depending on how you feel for that day. I know that’s a pretty general answer, but I hope I went into some little sub caveat of how you should feel and what that should feel like. Because it’s important to remember and important to keep in mind that training and feeling extremely tired or going out all every workout isn’t necessarily going to be the best thing for your fitness. Hope that helped to answer your question Matt.

If you have your own questions and you want to ask our coaching staff, I’m doing the daily podcast for the next couple of episodes, probably into next week, but after that, we’re going to have our entire coaching staff come in and answer your questions. For an entire weak, it will be one of our coaches answering your questions. Head over to runnersconnect.net/daily, you’ll see the record button. Click that, it will open a pop up, and then you can record your own question, submit it to us. If you have a specific coach you want to ask it to, you can certainly ask that as well and we’ll try to do our best to make sure that they get it, but we’ll try to answer your question on air.

I do hope that you enjoyed the episode. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but if you want to head over to iTunes or your podcast directory and rate us, review us, that would be helpful. It helps to boost our rankings in iTunes or whatever your podcast directory is and it helps us reach more runners. I appreciate you joining me today. I hope to see you for the next episode and hope you have a good run today. Thanks.