How I Avoid Burnout: Hailey Danz, Olympic Paratriathlete
Find new goals, and know why you’re trying to achieve them, she says.
Illustration by Oscar Bolton Green
Hailey Danz, a paratriathlete, trained seven hours a day for the Tokyo Paralympics, only to see the event postponed in March. Then the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., where she’s lived for three years, closed its workout facilities, and her team stopped training together. “The team environment is normally really motivating for me, and that went away,” Danz says. She borrowed medicine balls, kettlebells, and other equipment from the center and biked 40 days in a row. “On day 40, I was like, I never want to be on a bike again. I’m so over this.”
Danz, 29, says that burnout risk is high among endurance athletes. “It’s that feeling of being so exhausted and fatigued that the idea of going out and training is more than you can handle; it’s both mental and physical,” she says. She grapples with it a couple of times a year in the best of conditions. “My coach and I have gotten into a nice, little groove where we can kind of predict when it’s going to happen and take action to prevent it,” she adds. Here’s her strategy: