What to do when feeling jaded?

by CJD
(Ireland)

What to do when feeling overly tired in the 100 day plan :

"Hi Marius
Have just read Ricks post concerning proper marathon recovery where he stated that he started struggling towards the end of his training plan with fatigue resulting in a poor effort on race day.
My own training mirrors Ricks problems with increasing fatigue,a struggle to hit paces..even the easy efforts are now hard!
I am into week twelve of the 3.15 plan and although the tapering is due to start was wondering would a week of cross training or even complete rest be of more benefit to me.
Sorry for the personal nature of the question but i'm sure lots of people must get weeks when they struggle,especially in the marathon specific training weeks.
Best Regards
CJ"

Answer: Great question. Now, what I would suggest if you feel like you've "done too much" and the recovery days does not seem to work is to pick one of the weeks of the post-marathon phase and to this for 1 week. Those consist of shorter progressive intervals not very hard and plenty of rest days. What this does is the same as in the post-marathon phase : it brings back elasticity to tired legs and may just be what you need, reading from your explainations below. So do not go for the "rest-week" solutions (not a good idea, total rest usually have the opposite effect..) but use the post-marathon type training instead to get going again. Test it out and I'm certain you'll be right there again after 5-7 days.

kind regards,
Marius