Fatigue and Muscle Soreness

Part of the game of being a good athlete (that is, if you choose to truly live the life of an athlete) is getting in touch with the many physical and mental states that you experience--not only during training and racing, but as part of your daily life, because the life of the athlete is the ENTIRE DAY. EVERYTHING affects your ability to train and recover; it is the wise, aware athlete that utilizes this knowledge to guide them to making good decisions that will impact their training and racing.

First, let's assume you have a training plan. It might be good, it might not be. The RIGHT training plan will be matched to help you achieve your reasonable goals, maintaining your strengths while significantly addressing your limiters. If you know yourself really well and/or you work with a coach who knows you really well, the training plan can also be a vehicle for really pushing your limits, which is a not always conventional way of increasing fitness and building mental toughness and confidence.

For example, 2 years ago, I registered for a 200k ride that has 10,000 feet of climbing in it. Did I know I could do it? Part of me did. But more importantly, my coach recognized this as a stretch goal, and he made damn sure my training was going to support the successful completion of the event. I already had enough fitness to push my training a little further. Would that event be appropriate for someone who averages 50 miles per week? No, not unless that person had several months to build their weekly mileage or they just wanted to do something stupid. No self-respecting coach would support an athlete doing that 200K ride without having an appropriate amount of time to build up to it.

Enough on coaching. Coaching and a plan only takes you so far, though, right? From time to time, we like to spontaneously push ourselves farther in a workout than we were supposed to. That's not always a bad thing; PROVIDED you adjust recovery time on the back end. One of the tenets of properly executing a training plan is consistency; the other is GO EASY WHEN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO SO YOU CAN GO HARD WHEN YOU NEED TO. A big mistake many athletes make is they do their "easy" days too hard or in that "twilight zone" where you are not really physiologically causing any metabolic or muscular improvement; yet it may feel good for you to go at that pace or intensity. If you do this too often, you are creating a bad situation: 1) you are not developing the proper metabolic systems (fat burning ability is enhanced by spending time in the lower, "easier" intensities) and 2) you are compromising your recovery.

The way to control intensity is different for the 3 sports: for running it is best tied to heart rate, or a combination of heart rate and pace (to compensate for environmental factors and also your current fatigue state--more on that later); for cycling it is best tied to power output, but in absence of that measurement being available to the athlete it will be heart rate and pace, just like for running; and for swimming it will generally be pace combined with rest intervals.

If you do your workouts at the appropriate intensity, and your training plan is periodized, and you allow at least 48 hours between your breakthrough workouts (see Joe Friel for a definition), then it's possible to predict how you will feel, based on your total training volume and the amount of intensity called for, all other things being equal. All other things being equal means you have solid training nutrition, and get adequate sleep and minimize stress.

Should you feel fatigue? Some, if you've taken a break away from training or you just did an intense workout or a very long workout (don't we all want a nap after a 5+ hour ride?). Should you feel constant fatigue? If you're training for Ironman at let's say 16+ hours per week, then yes, you should expect an underlying level of fatigue, all other things being equal.

When is it not appropriate to feel overwhelming fatigue? If you are training at a level above your capabilities. Period. If your training plan is overly aggressive for your base fitness, your hours available to train, your ability to exercise proper nutrition and recovery, it's possible you will be much more tired than normal. OR you have dug yourself a hole by regularly overreaching in workouts; i.e., pushing harder than you should be. OR you did something stupid, like you tried to run 2 marathons 4 weeks apart. The body is very smart; it will find a way for you to recover one way or the other. This is why it sends out signals!

Now, we are talking about endurance sport here. When should endurance sport actually hurt? That is, when might you expect a workout or a training block to cause you actual muscle soreness? In my experience, only lifting should cause me to experience muscle soreness for up to 48 hours after the workout. Races may leave you with muscle soreness for perhaps 24 hours; after that you are more likely to fall into general fatigue.

Endurance training workouts, though, in general might leave you just plain tired for a few hours to perhaps 24. But your training plan should allow for either an easy, recovery day, or day off after a really tough one. Trust me, not that many full time age groups train every single day like I do--I've made a few sacrifices :) If you find yourself deeply fatigued or muscularly sore, it's time to have a little chit-chat with your coach. If you don't have a coach, perhaps it's time to get one. Some of us, unfortunately, are so good at pushing our own limits that we will literally work ourselves to the point of overtraining before making the necessary adjustments. That, my friends, is why I, Crackhead, Mind of Iron, have a coach. I am perfectly capable of shelling myself, and that is not effective training. My coach keeps me in line!

I can write training plans, and now I think I can write better ones that allow for adequate recovery. The problems many self-coached athletes have with building their own training plans are:

• overestimation of time available to train
• underestimation of time needed to recover from breakthrough workouts
• suboptimal daily scheduling of workouts that promotes poor recovery
• trying to combine high volume with high intensity
• lack of understanding of training principles which leads to training the wrong metabolic systems
• underestimation of the importance of proper nutrition
• trying to burn the candle at both ends
• inattention to limiters

There are more, but any one of these things can lead to poor recovery, poor performance or both. So when you are experiencing poor recovery (as manifested by "too much" fatigue or lingering muscle soreness), it's time to take a look at your training log (you keep one, don't you? This is part of your self-diagnosis toolkit when things go badly) objectively to understand how you got where you are. Are you overreaching? Are you underrecovering? Are you missing workouts so that when you get to a key workout it trashes you? Are you coming down with an illness?

Part of the game is being able to ask yourself these questions when you're feeling out of sorts. If you have a coach, you need to be honest with him/her that you are having difficulty and work together to sort it out. If you don't have a coach, it might help to have a trusted advisor or mentor that you can bounce things off of.

If you read my Tunnel Vision post the other day, you saw that I expected a certain level of fatigue, so it wasn't any surprise when I experienced it. This is a skill just as much as performing the sports is a skill! This is why it is important to find a way for you to have some quiet time with yourself every day. Some people meditate--I am able to meditate while I am exercising--others just lay quietly in bed either just before sleeping or just before arising. My point is, you need to find a few minutes every day to really stop and listen to what your mind and your body are telling you. Not just when things are going badly, but also when they are going well! Athletes also easily fall into the trap of "I'M INVINCIBLE" particularly during peaking periods or heavy training periods. If you ever study the I Ching, you will know that every action eventually converts to its opposite, so if you're feeling invincible, watch out--something is about to bring you down off your self-imposed pedestal.

There will be more on this. This is just a start. I need to relax, as I am very tired from hours of traveling and yapping at customers!