As for the question why my recovery is so slow this time round, there are several angles on that as well. First of all, recovery after a long ultra is always much slower than I want it to be, so maybe it's no worse than usual and I'm just being impatient. Another theory, not favoured, is that I'm getting old and recovery simply takes longer. I also won't rule out the possibility that running 24 hours on concrete has caused more damage than previous races on a track. My nutrition is pretty much the same as always and definitely on the healthy side (apart from a mild chocolate addiction that's not new and I'm trying to be good). After discussion all that with my coach we decided to cut back the training, even though I'm already doing a lot less that I would usually do, and aim for 2 full recovery days a week, at least for now.
I've had a really weird problem the last few weeks which I've mentioned already. Whenever I am sitting down, after about half an hour my quads start hurting. If I get up and walk around the discomfort disappears within half a minute. If I am unable to do so (say, because I'm in a meeting or doing a course), it gets worse and worse until I am in absolute agony. Until yesterday both legs were equally affected and it just did not seem to be getting any better. Today, however, all of a sudden my right leg feels fine but the left is still bad. I'm obviously hoping that the left one will improve as well (and that it's not simply the left one deteriorating faster all of a sudden). Thankfully I'll be heading into some sunshine next week, which means I won't have to spend half of my day sitting at a desk and hopefully that will clear up whatever is affecting me.
Since training has been reduced this week I've hardly done anything so far. 3 miles on Monday, 7 on Tuesday, all at recovery effort, and nothing on Wednesday. I'm pretty sure I'm not overtraining at the moment.
- 1 Aug
- 3+ miles, 30:08, 9:43 pace, HR 128
- 2 Aug
- 7 miles, 1:06:17, 9:28 pace, HR 130
- 3 Aug
- 0
Recovery from hard sessions does take longer as one ages. There are many examples of runners increasing 'easy' day numbers between 'hard' from one to two or three as they age. Not saying you're getting old or anything ;-)
ReplyDeleteHi Thomas, On the quad pain - I have experienced that before and it was due to a tight sartorial muscle. I went down the route of foam rolling but apart from making it more painful it did nothing to help. The eventual cause (and solution) was nothing to do with the quads but was a tight Ilioacaral joint that was causing leg mobility problems. Some physio, needling and home stretching put it right (as did lots of other things like not running through the pain, changing shoes and so on).
ReplyDeleteHoliday sunshine, has to be one of natures greatest medicinal gifts, lap it up, good chance it'll help reboot the training by the time you get back.
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