For Triathletes this is a Time of Transition
A friend trained a full year to do an Ironman triathlon. At the conclusion of her event she had a conversation with me about her depression, weight gain, irritability, and lack of energy. My friend spent a lot of time with her team and now doesn’t. She spent hours every day training and now doesn’t. She put in an enormous amount of energy, training and learning about the sport; all things that weren’t ordinary to her life and now doesn’t. Unconsciously she gave up everything in her life during that time and when the event was over she had no resources to deal with the aftermath. She had a job, a daughter, a house, and friends but she had put those things on the back burner for an entire year so she could train for her Ironman and trying to figure out how to get her life back was a real struggle.
Does this sound like you
Do you put everything into your sport and when the event or season is over question what happened to the rest of your life? It is a common problem particularly among endurance athletes; many I see in my office. Most vulnerable seem to be first time endurance athletes, beginning ultra-endurance athletes and women. First timers, beginning ultra-endurance and women athletes are most prone because they all come prepared to do whatever it takes to get through their first or their longest and for women it’s just part of their make up.
Some things to think about
Do you want to transition through each event or season smoothly or do you want to make it hard on yourself? Do you want to keep your friends, family, school or work life in tact or do you want to try and find or renew those relationships after every event or season?
Life is all about balance
What can you do about putting all your eggs in one basket? Transition is all about learning how to have balance. I know you’ve heard this time and time again but think about balance in simple terms: if on either side of a scale you put more than the other side then there is going to be disproportion, right? Life is exactly the same. Too much training and no social life; lack of balance and the scale tilt to one side. If you are continuing to have too much training and no social life the lack of balance leads to no balance and possible burnout; the scale continues to tilt to one side. At some point you need to bring the scale back to balance/homeostasis by providing yourself the things you need to balance out: friends, vacation, family, time to read, write, sit, think, etc. My suggestion is that instead of always tilting completely to one side and always needing to find your way back why not tilt a little to one side or the other from time to time but never let yourself get too far out of balance.
As endurance athletes we tell ourselves…
‘I will get that break and time to do (blank) when the season’s over’ but the season is never really over is it? The first season you might take November-February off from training but the more involved you become the less time you take off and the cycle is perpetuated. One reason it’s perpetuated is because you’ve spent all your time training and are so out of balance that you have no idea how to get back into balance. There comes a point where you forget how to live life and your total identity becomes triathlete, marathoner or cyclist.
The ending of an event or a season may provide some distress for an athlete but how bad that distress is dependent on you. Figuring out how to be re-involved and re-acquainted with family and friends can be a huge problem that provides a lot of anxiety but how bad the anxiety (again) depends on you.
Join me on December 1st as I talk more in depth about burnout and over-training: http://ow.ly/7jzmr
I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Dr. Michelle
Photo credit: blogs.reuters.com
