Recovery

A friend asked me about consuming alcohol and its affect on recovery. I ended up stating that I believe that as long as you have a good diet and are getting sufficient sleep, that a few beers or glasses of wine shouldn't affect you too much. If you are really going for a Kona slot or you just want to see how you perform without any alcohol, go for it.

But then I got to thinking about the whole recovery thing, and there are so many factors that enter into it. What is recovery? I would define being recovered as:

the ability to train as hard as or harder than the most recent good, hard effort

where "hard effort" is a workout where you are able to do work at or above threshold/LT/FT pace, however you define it. If your most recent hard effort was a race, you are recovered when you can do a hard workout like the one before the race--nobody can just race and race and race! One reason that I am not an advocate of all long and easy "base" stuff in the "off season" is because it is too easy to slack on recovery like eating well, not putting on weight, sleeping well, etc., since you are not doing any hard efforts that truly test whether or not you are recovered!)

If I trained hard yesterday and all I do today is an easy (Z1/Z2) workout or two, then I can't say for sure whether I'm recovered. But the next time I try and do a pretty hard workout, I can sure tell.

Should we be striving for 100% recovery by the next day after a hard workout? If your job is to train, they I would say yes--otherwise, you need to get in touch with your own body so you know how many days you might need to recover from a hard or breakthrough effort.

For example, Sunday I did a 1-hour sprint race, and I also ran and biked easy afterwards. I did not expect to be fully recovered from that on Monday, and in fact, Monday all I had scheduled was a short, easy swim and an easy run. And I could tell I wasn't recovered. Yesterday, I had a hard interval bike workout to do, which I did after about 30 minutes of strength training. Did I execute well on the bike workout? I did OK, but I could tell I wasn't fully recovered from Sunday (sleeping less than 6 hours does that to me!). Still, I did the best I could, and knew that I it was critical that I focus on recovery last night. I got a massage, got to sleep early, and slept really well, and feel pretty good. But I won't really know until I do my track workout in a few minutes whether I am fully recovered.

If you don't know your own body well, you might start your next hard workout, notice that you aren't going to be able to hit the workout's objectives and bag it altogether or just turn it into an easy, aerobic workout. There are certainly times when this is the best thing to do. I know that for me, I am comfortable "doing the best I can" in the workout, and as long as I am close to the objectives, I am fine with it. I don't get down on myself for missing targets as long as it doesn't become habitual, and I keep pretty meticulous track of my workouts, so for example, on Thursday I am doing the same bike workout as Tuesday, and I should be able to perform it 100% to specs.

Now what about "recovery workouts?" I think this is highly individual. For some people, it's more of a mental thing to get back out there and do something, and our mental state affects our physical state so much, that if you think you will feel like a slacker if you do nothing but rest, then you are probably better off doing some sort of easy workout. But recovery is generally not doing, and for me that means sleep, massage, stretching, reading a book in bed, anything that gets me off my feet! Swimming can be recovery, too, but only if it's only about 1/2 hour or less and real easy.

All most age groupers can do to foster recovery is to pay attention to their bodies and to train at levels that can be recovered from. That is, I can train harder than some age groupers and not as hard as others. Plus, you need to take your goals into consideration. Generally speaking, my triathlon goals are to not suck in my races (MOP or better at any distance), do some really cool extreme shit, and have boatloads of fun while training hard a lot and still enjoying non-triathlon hobbies. Mostly I just like being highly fit! For other people, the goal might be general fitness, which allows for a lot of slack in how hard you train.

I think the key point is that recovery is relative to your goals. There's no need to worry too much about recovery if you aren't too concerned about being competitive, and if you aren't, then you are more likely to just bag a workout than try and execute it "as best you can." The more competitive you are, though, the more you need to pay attention to how your training plan plus recovery gets you there. A training plan is only as good as your ability to recover from it along the way. If you aren't recovering, you need to either scale back your goals (and your training) or bump up your recovery measures. There is no middle ground. And your ability to recover changes as you age, trust me I know!

A few other things post-track workout that I thought about...If you are feeling like you're not recovering, go through this list and see if any of them might be involved:

1. Sleeping long enough and restfully?
2. Executing good post-workout nutrition?
3. Taking in sufficient carbs to support your training load?
4. Eating a variety of foods, meeting your vitamin/mineral needs?
   
5. Minimizing life stress and performing rejuvenation techniques like stretching, massage, meditation?
6. Attending to lingering aches and pains before they turn into injuries?
   
7. Completing workouts at the appropriate intensity? In particular, are you going too hard when you don't need to?
8. Carrying an appropriate training load based on your history? I.e., if you trained 200 hours last year and this year's plan has you training 300 hours, it could be a recipe for disaster.
9. Reverse tapering (i.e., ramping back up after a race) appropriately?
   
10. Maintaining a healthy weight to minimize joint stress?

Those are some of the questions I ask myself or someone else if I/they are not feeling recovered.

I fucking love training hard, but I love my recovery, too!