Monitoring and titrating symptoms : a science-based approach to using your brain to optimise marathon running...

A key challenge to optimising marathon running performance is to train with adequate frequency, duration and intensity as well as get enough recovery to optimise biological adaptations underlying performance. Some marathon runners train inadequately and underperform, while others perform poorly because they become injured or develop staleness in response to overtraining. Staleness, a depression-like syndrome, could plausibly be caused by overtraining-induced molecular and cellular changes in brain circuits involved in depression or other related mood states such as anger, fatigue, vigor and confusion. The central thesis of this paper is that easily assessed resting and/or exercise symptoms, valid markers of either difficult-to-access, expensive-to-assess or unmeasurable brain circuits, can be used to optimise marathon running performance by helping to avoid either inadequate training or excessive training resulting in staleness. Available models of human performance and relevant data, admittedly incomplete at the present time, suggest that marathon runners may benefit from systematically using symptom responses to training in order to aid in adjusting training loads for the purpose of optimising training. As this approach is better linked with neuroscience and neuroimaging findings, it could be refined and prove to be useful for elite as well as non-elite marathon runners.