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Feeling crappy during recovery weeks
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 2014-11-27 8:11 AM |
New user 8 |  Subject: Feeling crappy during recovery weeksI've been doing tris of various distances for decades. The past few years, I've trained mostly at half IM distance. I'm now doing base training for another full IM. I train in cycles of 2-3 weeks of hard training, followed by a recovery week. I've noticed that during my recovery weeks, I feel totally crappy for about the first 5 days and then start to feel better. I always feel totally wiped out, don't sleep well and am in a totally pissy mood. I totally feel overtrained. I feel like this during the recovery week of every training cycle and my Restwise scores plummet down into the red zone, when at the end of the hard part of my training cycle, they were okay. I usually wind up backing way off volume and totally off intensity during my recovery weeks because of this and I know this hurts my overall training. Anybody have any thoughts as to why this happens? Think it's a bad idea to make my recovery weeks a little harder and maybe I won't hit that plummet? I'm afraid that will leave me overtrained and not really let me recover. I've tracked sleep, diet, stress - nothing seems to be a logical explanation for this, but it happens with every recovery week. BTW, also happens when I taper for a big race. Thanks |
| 2014-11-27 9:50 AM in reply to: Maggie:) |
Extreme Veteran 1986     Cypress, TX | Subject: RE: Feeling crappy during recovery weeks IMO, you don't need recovery weeks if you factor in recovery during the normal training regimen. Not a lot of coaches use the recovery week training method anymore. You might want to look into the Polarized Training method. It sounds like you might benefit from it. |
| 2014-11-27 6:10 PM in reply to: Maggie:) |
Master 8247  Eugene, Oregon Bronze member | Subject: RE: Feeling crappy during recovery weeks I don't train for full IM, but I've always had the same experience during recovery weeks and taper. I generally feel awful, sleep poorly, and (during taper) often get sick. I think this is more often in people who've been at endurance sports for a long time (I've been a distance runner for 35 years). Your body comes to know hard training as "normal life", so backing off that is a kind of stress in itself and will affect sleep, appetite, feelings of well-being, etc. On one hand, feeling crappy for a few days may be a sign of the body trying to repair itself from cumulative fatigue, minor niggles, etc. On the other, if you're not coming out of recovery weeks or taper better than you came in, then maybe it's time to re-examine them. I've generally stopped putting them into normal training (excluding taper) except for perhaps having a week each month when my long run and/or ride is shorter than normal. |
| 2014-11-28 6:34 AM in reply to: GMAN 19030 |
| New user 8 | Subject: RE: Feeling crappy during recovery weeks Interesting - didn't know that. Thanks. Maybe it's time to switch things around. |
| 2014-11-28 6:35 AM in reply to: Hot Runner |
| New user 8 | Subject: RE: Feeling crappy during recovery weeks That's a really good point - if I don't come out of my recovery weeks stronger, why am i doing them? Duh. Why didn't I see that?! Thanks! |
| 2014-11-29 7:39 AM in reply to: Maggie:) |
Master 1779 | Subject: RE: Feeling crappy during recovery weeks When I first started training for triathlons I would take every Monday as a Recovery day. This was years and 2 triathlon coaches ago. The only time that I've ever taken a week TOTALLY off was after surgery. Well actually even that isn't true as I started PT the following day..Even the week after an IM there are always active recovery days on the schedule. As you've already experienced taking an extended amount of time off will make you feel horrible. When I took Monday off it seemed like every Tuesday was starting all over again with training. A balanced training program that includes active recovery workouts will probably do more for you than taking time off. What type of training are you doing that you would need to take an entire week off from anyway? There are a lot of great training programs in books or online that you could use if you don't want to hire a coach. Good Luck. I bet you have a SIGNIFICANT improvement in your training and racing times once you drop that week off out of your schedule. Plus you'll feel 100% better.
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