Stress and Running

Stress comes in many forms, both physical and emotional, and interacts in a holistic way. Stress from your personal and professional lives can negatively affect your running… and too much running can certainly have a negative effect on other aspects of your life.

Stephanie Howe’s Stress and Running is a great place to get a sense of how life stresses and running interact, while Ian Torrence’s Don’t Stress Out: Understanding Running Stress lays out the specific forms of running stress. In an excerpt from their book, Where the Road Ends, Meghan Hicks and Bryon Powell share An Introduction to Healthy Running and Living.

Corrine Malcolm describes the interplay of running and life stress and how they can lead to overtraining in Beyond Fatigue: Understanding Overtraining Syndrome (more on overtraining syndrome), while she lays our how heart rate variability can be used to monitor the combines stresses of running and life in What the Heck is Heart Rate Variability?

Sleep and various forms of recovery can help lower your overall stress and, if you so choose, possibly let you sustainably increase your training.