I just got back from a run. It didn't go to plan, but it did inspire this.
My pace was down, my heart rate was up, and I just felt like shit.
It's always a bummer, but when you're training regularly, it happens sometimes.
It got me thinking about how often I get emails from our athletes panicking that they had a bad session like it's gonna somehow ruin weeks and months of good quality prep.
It doesn’t work like that.
Not every bad session looks the same
Sometimes you miss your numbers entirely. Sometimes you hit the targets and just feel terrible. Pace was good, HR was good, but you felt heavy and just struggled through. That counts, too.
Bad sessions happen for many reasons. Cumulative fatigue from weeks of training. Stress. Dehydration or under-fuelling. Using the wrong gear. In my case today, it was a very bad night's sleep.
The body has bad days, and that's part of it. That's training.
One session is just one session.
Fitness isn't lost when one goes wrong. It's built with consistency across hundreds of sessions over months, years even. One bad run sits inside all of that. It doesn't undo any of it.
What the session is telling you
A bad session isn't a warning sign on its own. It's just a bad day.
Occasionally, though, it's telling you something worth knowing.
Persistent fatigue. Sessions that feel harder than they should. A high heart rate across the week, muscle soreness that won't ease, or trouble sleeping.
When those things start piling up, that's a pattern, and you need to notice it. One bad session isn't.
What not to do
Don't try to make up for it. Smashing the next session to compensate is how you turn one bad day into two.
What to do instead
Write down what might have contributed. I prefer paper. The lesson sinks in better for me that way. You can also add it as a note to your session in Strava or the Coached app.
Then, let it go and get back to work.
Tomorrow will be better.
