Wait Training

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Runners who over train and become subject to overuse injuries as a result of thinking that more training is better and will help one meet goals more rapidly. The problem can manifest as either a serious of recurring overuse injuries or chronic fatigue syndrome, affecting the entire system. The bottom line is that with chronic injuries due to over training, you will never achieve sufficient training loads to produce prolong improvement.
 

Therefore, the journey of mastery asks that you enter into a new time zone in which you slow down to go faster. Running creates numerous opportunities for you to slow down, develop, and practice the virtue of patience. We recommend that you develop strength in this area through wait training: notice the natural flow of events and then act accordingly. This requires constant vigilance as you monitor your progress with regard to levels of energy, fatigue, soreness, staleness, slumps, plateaus, spurts, enthusiasm, and burnout. Too much too soon, that familiar hurry-up sickness, invariably leads to injury or illness -- nature’s way of telling you to slow down, reevaluate and take a break. Learn to read your body, and initiate small adjustments in your training to avoid excess overload and injury.

Don’t think of mastery as the capacity to endure, but as an act of perseverance. See it, instead as the willingness to be at peace and give yourself time to develop as an athlete without placing limits on how long it will take to reach mastery. 

   

Think for a moment about the race between the tortoise and the hare. Through the inner qualities of consistent, deliberate, steady, slow movement, the tortoise arrived sooner than the quicker yet spastic, inconsistent and fatigued hare. Haste does, indeed, make waste. And remember, if your running life is a good one, a life of mastery, most of it will be spent on a plateau.

Running Within by Jerry Lynch and Warren Scott