Top runner Roman Fosti offers advice: when you must stop training immediately

Top runner Roman Fosti explains what metric signals that training must be stopped at once. The article addresses a common mistake among amateur athletes – planning overly intense training without adequate preparation, especially ahead of a half-Ironman distance.

Among amateur athletes there is a popular dream: preparing for a half-Ironman with several months of intense training, which includes 1.9 kilometres of swimming, 90 kilometres of cycling, and 21.1 kilometres of running. However, top runner Roman Fosti warns that such an approach can be dangerous.

According to Fosti, one of the most important indicators that an athlete must monitor is a certain physiological metric that must not exceed four – if this threshold is exceeded, training must be stopped immediately. Amateur athletes who previously trained only sporadically often make the mistake of quadrupling their weekly training volume overnight.

Enthusiasts who start training four days a week often choose maximum effort as their engine, but the body cannot adapt to such a pace quickly enough. The result is injuries, overtraining, or in the worst case a health crisis. Fosti emphasizes that increasing the body's training load must be gradual and deliberate.

The top runner advises amateur athletes to honestly assess their current fitness level before setting major goals, and plan their training accordingly – not based on what friends promise in the sauna.