This post is about my most recent discovery. Unfortunately, all those podcasts about cumulative stress are correct. It's not just the physical stress that counts but also mental stress and lack of sleep . Once you've optimized your training plan, managed to ramp your weekly miles up to the desired distance thanks to the 10% incremental weekly distance rule, the recovery weeks and all the low heart rate training you can still end up overloading your body and needing time out.
In my case it was mainly self inflicted. I started community from another town, which meant I had to wake up at 5:30 am and only got home around 8pm. I ran almost every day, but then besides getting enough sleep also traveled a lot at the weekends and drunk after work in the evenings. The end result that within six weeks I git sick twice for about 10 days each. Each time I had just ramped up my running load to my desired level and then had to take two weeks off from running and start from scratch (or at least that's what it felt like).
Basically: alcohol massively degrades your sleep. My Garmin watch showed me that my resting puls while sleeping was 10-15 points higher following a night of drinking. Instead of my battery charging to 100% it would cap out at 55% or so, and my sleep score would you between 40-60 instead of the high 80s low 90s that it would when I did not drink. Add this alcohol induced degradation to an overall lack of hours rested, mix in long work days, some cold weather and daily runs and the battery was empty.
Low heart rate running meant I didn't feel the usual muscle aches after running, but I was still draining my battery. For me this means that I have to accept that my running goals are not compatible with my social life. At the very least I will have to ensure I get a couple more hours of sleep each night and cut out a couple of beers. I'll probably try and go without alcohol for a couple of months leading up to the peak race season and also to cut down on weekend getaways that don't involve running.
If you don't like to drink then you're in luck. But my advice would still be to look out for your body's overall stress load. If you're not feeling well, it's not worth risking it. One day lost in training is nothing when compared to the training loss of 10 days on antibiotics. If you really have to get out there because you have a big endurance race in the not to distant future, the one thing I have found in the past is that a walk is always an option. Going for a 1-2 hour walk at the weekend, possibly with a weighted rucksack, is a lower stress way of working out your legs and your core if you're feeling that you might be coming down with a cold.
That's already the end of the post. The only key experience I wanted to share is that low heart rate training isn't a panacea for everything. It may save your joints from overtraining, but your running will still add to your overall stress load, just you might not be as aware of it. You therefore need to be even more aware of the stress your body is encountering outside of running.