Konatri
Posts 28
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This was a post I did in my Blog last year. I figured it would be a good time to bring it up, since the season is winding down.
Shedding Fatigue
This topic has been on my mind a lot lately. I guess it started about a week ago when I caught a cold and was just having a hard time getting out of bed, let alone getting out the door for training sessions. I started to get upset, thinking what the heck is going on, I am well rested and ready to get going building for next year. Finally, I happened to look at the date. I was exactly one month out from my last "A" race. Normally, one month after a HIM I am fine, but what I didn't take into account is the cumulative effect of 11 months of constant training. My season started last Jan. at Epic camp 1 IM, 3 HIM's, and 12+ other races.
So I decided to take a couple days off and figure out how to shed this fatigue I was obviously feeling. Alan Couzens does a great job explaining the science behind what I was feeling. http://alancouzens.blogspot.com/
I have a great advantage to seeing how athletes react to the triathlon off season. I made a conscience effort this year to ask all my patients how they are planning to recover from the long triathlon season. Seeing as most are in my office due to some kind of injury, the answers are very interesting.
The answer I hear the most.... "I am going to work on my run by training for a marathon..." Now keep in mind they are already in my office because the are already having some kind of biomechanical issue. (Let me back up a bit..... Most average age groupers end up walking in the marathon portion of the Ironman, so they feel that they need to work on their run, when in fact they are very inefficient in the swim and the bike. Instead of working on the run they should put their efforts in building an efficient swim, and proper bike pacing. But anyway, that is for another post.) Back to fatigue.... So the athlete has a long triathlon season, and they are going to jump right into training for a marathon or hard run training, never giving the body a chance to fully recover. Which is exactly why they are in my office at some point. I have even seen a few people repeat this pattern on a yearly basis.
Some advanced athletes can get away with this for a couple years, but at some point it is going to come crashing down. Fatigue accumulates, while not allowing you to gain that much fitness to make the breakthroughs you are looking for. And if you read Alan's blog you will see that he talks about fatigue being stripped away at a faster rate than a decline in fitness. Even though mentally we feel the need to feed our training obsession, sometimes the best training we can do for a break though 2009 is to rest.
Like a mentioned in a previous post, rest doesn't mean sitting on the couch doing nothing for 4 weeks. This year I am incorporating the same principles that apply to training after a huge "A" race. Active Recovery. But instead of it being for 7 to 10 days I am extending that time frame. The time is different for everyone. The difference between active recovery and doing nothing, is that you are still keeping your metabolism firing. You are allowing you tendons, muscles, and ligaments to maintain tone. But you aren't pushing hard enough to stress the system. One thing I look for after these sessions is that I feel energized after the training session and not tired. I always want to be left with the feeling of wanting to do more.
That's it for now. Hopefully, within the next month or so I can be more specific about protocol, and share some of the things that worked for me.
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