Burned Out By What You Love

Burned Out By What You Love

When Stress Sends Us Running

The irony for endurance athletes is that often when we need the sport the most, it’s the most dangerous for us. In times of stress, we lean heavily on our sport as comfort. Because it does reduce the mental load; it’s familiar and a place that we can channel any turmoil to something that makes sense. Who hasn’t uttered the words ‘I’m so stressed, I’m going for a run’, or ‘going to the pool’ or ‘hop on the bike’.

But the complexities of stress also mean that as we push harder and harder to ‘manage’ the other stress in our life, we are compounding the toll on our bodies. When life gets stressful, other things often fall by the wayside. Suddenly, we aren’t sleeping as well, our nutrition is an afterthought. Meanwhile, we are asking more of ourselves.

Your Body Doesn’t Differentiate Stress

Training is a stressor in a different way. So as we add more and more to that cumulative stress (and our body doesn’t know the difference between a work deadline and a tempo run; at least from a stress perspective) and we shift away from the keys to recovery, we unknowingly create the perfect storm that pushes us to the edge.

Often it’s a slow crescendo that builds in the background, unseen, until you hit the point of burnout, where what used to be fun and enjoyable, just feels heavy.

And sometimes it happens with a bang (like for me).

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My Crash Into Burnout

2025 rolled in ominously. I knew it was going to be a tough year professionally, I had just missed a BQ in my fall marathon, I had gained some extra marathon training weight, and I was dealing with family health issues.

Mired in uncertainty, I focused on the only thing that I felt I could control and threw myself in to training. I plunged into each workout with tunnel vision of pushing myself harder.

Even though I was waking up at 4 or 5 am, I’d roll out of bed, telling myself that it just gave me an early start to the day.

I didn’t let anything stop me. I’d run a 1 mile loop for 12 miles because of snow covered sidewalks. I would carry a full load of clothes and gear on my back to run into work just so my training wouldn’t be disrupted. I’d forgo the extra piece of fruit or half a bagel to try to lose the marathon weight

I ignored the warning signs, the insomnia, the exhaustion, the constant hunger in the quest to find what I felt was the only relief from the day to day stress.

And then there were the signs I didn’t see at the time, not until later. My fingernails weakened (I later developed deep grooves at that one spot in time and six months later, they broke off painfully early). My hands, unable tolerate the cold, swelled and painfully cracked.

Just like so many runners before me, I thought the way through the stress was through running. And it was working, channeling all of that frustration and fear, into something constructive. Until the day that it didn’t.

The Stress Fracture That Changed Everything

One fateful long run, I felt a sharp sort of pinch in my foot. With the same cavalier approach (or really, unwillingness to face reality), I ran the additional 4 miles home. For the next two weeks, I continued with my blind hope that it was a minor strain and would get better (I did, however make the one good decision in the whole course of events and did not run on it). At that point, I had to face reality. I pretty much knew what the answer would be and the x-rays confirmed it. Stress fracture. And just like that, I was done.

The worst part is that I knew better. I saw it coming and I was unable to make the decisions I needed to in order to keep myself healthy. As a coach, I was ashamed. I knew that if any of my athletes had done what I had, I would have stopped them on day 2.

But as an endurance athlete (and human), I was unable to navigate the balance. And that’s really what it is. Endurance sports CAN still be your stress relief, but it has to be in a way that ensures enough recovery from all of the stresses. That may mean additional sleep or more rest days. It definitely means adequate nutrition. It means being ok with missing a workout here or there. And, mostly it means recognizing the signs when they appear and being willing to pull back when your body tells you it has had enough.

The Lesson Every Athlete Needs

What we use as a stress reliever compounds the stress our body feels. We can’t differentiate on a physiological level between stress from exercise, stress from work, stress from lack of nutrition. It’s just builds and builds until something gives. And that’s not always in a spectacular stress fracture moment. It can be quieter, more insidious in the form of emotional or mental burnout.

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