good runs and bad runs

well, i am a novice runner and wanted to know whether other people experience what i experience at the mo. i have had a week off work and so decided to up my milage. i did my normal 6 miles on Sunday and went out for an easy three on Monday. i set my garmin 205 to 12 min miles and off i went. i found it hard to stick at this pace and was plodding along at 11. i decided to up the pace because i felt so good and really enjoyed the run feeling euphoric at the end. tuesday and wednesday were so bad that i missed running on thursday. i ran agian today and whilst not feeling pain i just did not enjoy it. so, thats 3 bad runs following the good one on monday. as a result, if i don't run tomorrow, i'll have added a mile or so to my weekly total. so much for upping the milage this week. what went wrong??

Neil - do you usually run every day?

No, I usually run 5 times a week with Monday and Saturday being rest days when I just do a 30 minute stretching routine.

Neil

I'm assuming that your sunday run is your longest and that you usually do this at a faster pace than some of your other runs. If so, it can often be the case that the effects of a longer/harder run will be felt more strongly two days later, rather than the next day. Hence monday's run possibly seemed easier than expected. Going a bit faster than intended on monday,combined with the sunday run, probably led to the fatigue on tuesday and wednesday.

Increasing weekly mileage can be quite challenging, so when doing so, maybe you might want to have two easy days after the long run. Even if you feel you can go faster, it it is probably best to stick to an easy pace on these two days. Then, if it feels okay, look to pick up the pace on the third day(wednesday), followed by another easy day.

Although you have had a few bad days, you will probably learn a lot from the experience and in the longer term even the bad days will be of value (that's certainly what I have found!).

I hope the above is of some assistance.

From the outside I'd say you are doing too much - overtraining pure and simple. Take moe rest between runs and don't run on consecutive days till you are very experienced . The body takes ages to adapt to running though the cardio system works up very quickly.

More rest now eventually leads to more running later!

thanks guys. i think that i need to stick to 5 days running and two days rest for now. doing 4x3 miles in the week and 6 miles on sunday will put me at 18 miles for the week. that's more than previously and so i should be happy - i suppose. i'll add another 6 on monday and then rest tuesday before 3x3 miles in mid-march when i hope to join up with a running club.