I'm doing everything, but I seem to be getting slower?!

I'm doing everything, but I seem to be getting slower?!

One of the most frustrating things we can feel as runners is feeling like we're doing everything, training consistently, working hard, adding extra sessions, and yet the times on the watch are getting slower.

Recently, we have had a few people mentioning that they feel like they are doing everything and more and not improving.

They had for example missed a planned tempo session, but instead of simply moving on, they decided to replace it with a best-effort 5K or last weeks speed session because it didn't quite fit with scheduling.

On paper, that might sound like a great workout.

After all, a hard 5K or a speed session is hard. Surely that's going to provide plenty of fitness stimulus?

Not necessarily.

And this is where one of the biggest lessons in training comes in:

Training isn't about doing as much as possible. It's about doing the right amount of the right things - and giving your body the opportunity to recover and be able to absorb them.

When we aren't seeing the progress we want, the natural response is often to add something.

Not getting faster?

Add another run.

Feeling like your mileage isn't high enough?

Add a few extra miles.

Missed a workout?

Make it up.

Want to test your fitness?

Run a hard parkrun.

And before long, a training week that was carefully designed to balance easy running, quality sessions and recovery becomes a collection of good ideas that don't necessarily work well together.

This is particularly common with motivated runners.

They're not lazy. They're generally not missing sessions. Quite the opposite.

They're doing more.

But more isn't always better.

Let's go back to that missed tempo session.

The decision to run a best-effort 5K wasn't inherently bad. A hard 5K can absolutely be a useful training stimulus.

The problem is the context.

A tempo session and a maximal 5K aren't interchangeable just because they're both "hard running".

A tempo session is designed to provide a particular stimulus at a controlled intensity. It should generally leave you able to continue training afterwards without requiring a huge recovery cost.

A best-effort 5K is a race effort.

It's considerably more demanding.

So if the programme says tempo and you substitute a maximal 5K, you haven't simply ticked the same box. You've potentially changed the stress of the entire week.

And if you then carry on with the rest of the planned training, you can end up stacking fatigue on top of fatigue.

This is where we can get caught in a frustrating cycle.

You do a hard workout.

You're tired, but you think:

"I need to be consistent."

So you do your next run.

Then perhaps you add another hard session because you're worried about losing fitness.

Maybe you run a parkrun at the weekend.

Perhaps you add a few extra miles because the weekly total looks low.

Each individual decision seems reasonable.

But collectively, they can create a problem.

Your training load has increased without your ability to recover increasing with it.

And when fatigue accumulates, performance can go backwards.

You may notice:

• Easy runs don't feel particularly easy.

• Your usual training paces feel harder.

• You struggle to hit paces that previously felt comfortable.

• Hard sessions become survival exercises rather than quality workouts.

• Your legs feel flat or heavy.

• You need more recovery between sessions.

• Race performances start to disappoint you.

The frustrating part?

You can actually be getting fitter underneath the fatigue but you aren't fresh enough to demonstrate it.

One of the most important concepts we try to teach runners is that you shouldn't judge an individual session on its own.

Look at the whole week.

A hard session on Tuesday might be perfectly appropriate.

A hard 5K on Saturday might also be perfectly appropriate.

But if you add another hard session on Thursday, turn Sunday into a long run with extra miles, and race another parkrun the following weekend, the picture changes.

The question isn't:

"Is this a good workout?"

The better question is:

"Is this a good workout for me, in this week, alongside everything else I'm doing?"

That's a much harder question and a much more useful one. Which is why you have a coach!

Training creates the stimulus.

Recovery allows you to adapt to it.

You need both.

If the training stimulus is too small, you might not improve.

But if the training stimulus continually exceeds your ability to recover, adding more isn't necessarily going to accelerate your progress.

This is why a well-designed training plan can sometimes look surprisingly conservative.

You might look at a session and think:

"I could do more."

You probably could.

But the goal isn't to prove how much you can do today.

The goal is to arrive at the important sessions next week, and the week after, healthy, recovered and ready to train.

One of the hardest things for us enthusiastic runners to learn is that not every opportunity to train harder needs to be taken.

You don't need to race every parkrun.

You don't need to make up every missed workout.

You don't need to add miles simply because your Strava weekly total looks a little disappointing.

You don't need to turn every run into a test of your current fitness.

And you definitely don't need to punish yourself for missing one session by replacing it with something harder.

Sometimes the smartest training decision is to do less.

That's not losing fitness.

That's protecting your ability to train well tomorrow.

A successful training week isn't necessarily the week where you accumulated the most miles, completed the most workouts or produced the fastest 5K.

It's the week that moves you towards your goal.

Sometimes that means pushing hard.

Sometimes it means running easy.

Sometimes it means completing the planned session exactly as prescribed.

And sometimes it means accepting that you missed a workout and simply moving on.

Because ultimately, good training isn't about seeing how much punishment you can tolerate.

It's about finding the sweet spot in that push to rest ratio.

So if you're doing everything you can think of to get faster but your performances are going backwards, don't immediately assume you need to do more.

Take a step back.

Look at the whole training week.

Count the hard sessions.

Count the extra miles.

Think about whether your "easy" runs are actually easy.

Look at how often you're racing or running best efforts.

And ask yourself one simple question:

Am I training as much as I can - or am I training as well as I can?

Those two things are very different.

And sometimes, the fastest way forward is to stop adding more and start getting better at doing just enough.