Have you: skipped breakfast for a long run? Ran race after race every weekend (or more than one per training season)? Participated in group posts/threads about who’s racing this weekend and where? Taken your easy days way too hard? Not carried any fuel or hydration for endurance activities longer than an hour? Obsessed over who would accompany you for the upcoming weekend training schedule? Taken your assigned workout and hit every segment better than designed? Skipped your taper? Showed off your Garmin’s “overreaching status” on social media? Shared your selfie face with your pace publicly displayed for your completed workout to get “likes” and “comments” on Facebook? Invited others along for a run but ditched them mid-run? Collected medals and shirts more than there is room in your closet? Find that you can’t unplug from anything besides running during your off-season? Do you even take an off-season?

Welcome to the “Dark Side” of endurance running. It consumes your soul. You brag and feel good. Social media is filled with it. Most highly motivated people are eager, ambitious, go-getters, and go all-in on their pursuits of goals and happy endorphins. However, it is not sustainable for longevity. And it’s time we take a step back to see the bigger problem. Overtraining and perfectionism are waiting to captivate you. And don’t think you are naive to injury by saying “I’ve never had an injury from running” or “Everything is great. That won’t happen to me.” As the 80% rule goes, “80% of runners running at 80% intensity or more will get injured 80% of the time.” ^[1]

I’ve found myself lately going back through multiple seasons of training logs and journals, re-analyzing Garmin data and spreadsheets, looking for THE answer on why I have repeatedly had mediocre performances from solid training seasons and why I keep snapping bones to stay in the rest-rehab-reset-restart cycle for the third year in a row. It’s not a fun place to be. Flashbacks happen vividly. Boredom reaches new levels. And the silence from healthy “workout friends” is deafening.

In an effort to understand why and “fix” things for good, I’ve been reading and resting more than there are minutes in an hour and days in the week. But, my learning journey has sprung a light on a few things that so many endurance athletes don’t know – myself included! And finally, when I think I exhausted my resources to absolutely nail nutrition, improve sleep, reduce non-fitness demands of life, optimize lab values, and level up strength training, while finally understanding heart rate zones, the bigger elephant in the room has glared back: overtraining and perfectionism have contributed to underperforming and under-recovery.

“Athletes fear that if they are not training, they are falling behind, their fitness slowly seeping out of them. This phenomenon is quite common in all types of high performers. We mask our insecurities with perfectionism and extreme levels of work. But doubts and insecurities are part of being human.” ^[2] I’ve had my fair share of doubts in the last few years. It’s a dark place to be. And just when I think I worked through them step by step, with help and a glimmer of hope of course, some of them resurface. Will I ever be able to run for pure fun again without having to worry about a sassy snapping skeleton?

“We believe that failure of any kind should be avoided instead of embraced because it shatters our confidence.” ^[2] In trying to make sense of perfectionism and shaken confidence, one pearl of wisdom has stood out: “Lower the bar. Raise the floor. Shed perfection. Embrace who you are.” ^[2] Lean into your strengths AND your weaknesses while learning your proper balance of expectations and demands. Do you try so hard to reach your goals that when trying so hard could be the very thing preventing them from being attained?

Along with the idea of inner balance, another element of the dark side that needs some attention is the balance of overtraining and under-recovery. “Successful training not only involves overload but must avoid the combination of excessive overload plus inadequate recovery.” ^[3] Are your two-a-day workouts on a sleep-deprived caffeine-stimulated body that you brag about on social media really helping you to escalate your game? Are your jet-setting late night adventures setting you up for long term success? When was the last day you did not post something about fitness? When was the last day you disconnected from all technology and just focused on resting? Do you need to rephrase “active recovery” into “complete recovery” instead? Don’t worry, I’m guilty of pushing the accelerator too often. We all have demands of life – careers, families, pets, bills, childcare, elder care, commutes, and the unforeseen problem that lingers to thwart your planned day. If you add these demands to an already busy training schedule, the energizer rabbit can only go for so long until the battery is drained from injury, sickness, burnout, and ultimately loss of motivation. You can do absolutely everything right for the short term, but confounding stress upon stress will haunt you for the long term.

“Overtraining is accumulation of training and/or non-training stress resulting in long term decrement in performance capacity with or without related physiological and psychological signs and symptoms of maladaptations in which restoration of performance capacity may take several weeks or months.” ^[3] It’s not just about training – how glorious your long run was or how heavy you lifted in the gym. It’s about the life load that you carry every day and your ability to unplug from it. If we constantly try to be perfect and not drop a single ball in the ecosystems of life, we will be left underperforming for a long time. “Athletes who are in a overtrained state may take months or possibly years to completely recover.” ^[3] Overtraining is not the result of one variable but it is a perfect storm that lingers in the shadows of the endurance world. In fact, 60% of females have reported at least one episode of overtraining syndrome. And over the span of a career, 33% of non-elite level adult runners reported symptoms of overtraining syndrome. ^[3] These statistics are part of the dark side of the endurance world.

Where do we go from here? Whether it’s burnout or injury that is causing you to be sidelined from your sport, it is the right time to search for the needle in the haystack. Step out of the forest to see the trees. Find your low-hanging fruit and do something about it. The first step is rest and recover, as hard as it is to pull the cord out of every single domain of life. I consider this a hard reset, like pushing the power button on your desktop to restart. “It is recommended that athletes should have at least one passive rest day each week to prevent them from becoming totally preoccupied with their sport.” ^[3] During this reset, take an inner look at your life – all domains – in order to set realistic attainable performance goals. Lower your expectations so that you can hit your goal consistently time and time again. When you are ready to boot backup, you’ll have a better sense of what your body is capable of, what life allows, and what your energy stores are ready for.

Gaining a better grasp on perfectionism, rebuilding confidence from the bottom to the top, recognizing overtraining, saying no to over-draining things, and preventing under-recovery are what I’m working on to find the “light side” of the endurance world once again. I’ve got 14 months to rebuild a confident mind and a robust skeleton to stomp through the rehab cycle for good and shatter the comeback starting gate —and you can bet I will make both things happen on time for a fresh starting line.

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1.) Johnson, C. Bones, tendons, weights, and whistles. 2021. Available from: http://chrisjohnsonpt.com

2.) Magness, S. Do hard things: Why we get resilience wrong and the surprising science of real toughness. New York: HaperOne; 2022.

3.) Meeusen R, et al. Prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the overtraining syndrome: joint consensus statement of the European College of Sport Science and the American College of Sports Medicine. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2013 Jan;45(1):186-205. PMID: 23247672.