We’ve all experienced those days. A workout or long run is in the plan but we’re just not feeling it. What do you do in those situations?
It’s in a runner’s nature to just push through. Get through it at whatever pace or effort level you can. But is this always the right answer?
No.
Sure, there are times when pushing through is the right answer. If the conditions are tough but safe and you’re just focusing on building fitness, you can still get the fitness boost and maybe a little mental toughness boost by battling through the conditions and knowing you’ll just be a little slower than planned. Obviously, if the conditions are dangerous, I hope you will put safety first.
However, there are cases when you might want to “tough it out” but the best thing you can do is skip the workout. Every situation is different but consider a few of the below scenarios and ask yourself what you should do if you encounter these.
- You’re doing a race pace workout and you just can’t hit pace.
- You do have one of those fitness building workouts but, due to fatigue, you just can’t hit your desired intensity regardless of pace.
- Regardless of workout, you have soreness that could be an impending injury.
- You have soreness that is affecting your form.
- Nothing is sore but you just don’t feel right.
- You’re getting close to your target race and you’re just feeling run down.
Hopefully, you can look at those scenarios and see that they range from “don’t even think about doing the workout” to “probably better off not doing the workout”. However, I guarantee that there are a lot of runners out there who in any one of those scenarios would decide to do the workout.
Don’t be that runner. In the best case scenario of the above, you will not get much if anything out of the workout and you might set yourself back in future workouts. In the worst, you would end up injured.
Instead, be willing to change the plan and skip the workout. This might be as simple as postponing the workout a day or it might be just not doing it at all.