Every runner has occasional flat days in training. Often these days come when you least expect them and have no apparent cause. But there’s always a cause, whether it’s identifiable or not, and this feeling of flatness is your brain’s way of telling you that it has detected something amiss internally and you shouldn’t push yourself. On these days, you will experience unusually high effort at any given pace or heart rate. If you force yourself to stick to a preselected pace or heart rate target, you will probably end up feeling even worse the next day. In such circumstances, it’s best to trust
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