Jason Hodgson should have been in the shape of his life–he was running twice a day and logging nearly 100 miles a week. But despite his dedicated efforts, his performance had plateaued. The 34-year-old Colorado Springs apartment manager and stepfather of two felt so sluggish during track workouts that he couldn't hit his splits, and he was constantly tired and crabby. "Everything irritated me," he says. The breaking point? When he blew up at his wife during a postworkout tantrum. Rosalie knew it wasn't Jason–it was his training–so she called her husband's coach, Neal Henderson, to say that Jason had had enough.
Henderson, an exercise physiologist at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, realized the problem: overtraining syndrome–a collapse in performance that occurs when the body gets pushed beyond its capacity to recover. Overtraining doesn't plague only elite athletes or those clocking mega-miles. Because it is often a problem not of too much training, but of too little rest, all runners are vulnerable, says Kristen Dieffenbach, Ph.D., an assistant professor of athletic coaching education at West Virginia University. "People think, How can I overtrain on 20 miles per week?" she says. "But you can if you don't give yourself the rest you need. You don't get stronger because you did an awesome workout, you get stronger because you ate right, slept, and recovered afterward."
If your body doesn't have the opportunity to repair itself, your hard work can eventually backfire, causing your running and your quality of life to suffer. Overtraining causes performances to drop and injuries to rise, as well as sleep disturbances, frequent and never-ending colds, headaches, decreased libido, even depression. Luckily, the solution can be as simple as asking yourself–or in Hodgson's case, your spouse–if you need an attitude adjustment.
Scientists have identified more than 130 signs of overtraining, including elevated heart rate, changes in blood-lactate levels, hormonal imbalances, and weakened immune response. But unless you're a lab rat whose physiological markers are being monitored on an ongoing basis, you may not recognize that you've gone too far until you're hit with a stress fracture or muscle tear. Which is why experts like Jack Raglin, Ph.D., a researcher on sports psychology and professor in the kinesiology department at Indiana University in Bloomington, recommend runners pay close attention to their moods.