'Be kind to yourself'... Something I say whenever I'm imparting wisdom to others who are frustrated with some things they've done, or are working towards. Any old-school athlete who competed in any sport more than 15 years ago will undoubtedly be well versed in the 'Want to improve? Train harder!'' school of progress. At my age, overtraining comes with risks. I've been very disciplined so far in taking an approach that has plenty of time away from running and that has kept me mostly free of injuries that I'm trying to avoid, and helping me fix the ones I'm carrying. The days of dislocating a shoulder one weekend and playing a rugby match 5 days later are loooong behind me. I've noticed an interesting thing happens after a hard training week on this journey so far. When I ease off for a week, the following week my performance is stronger.
I've been finding my body needs time to heal, and if I don't push it too far or fast then I bounce back more quickly.
Take this weekend as an example. I've just run 52km. My first ultra. It should have killed me. But, the hamstring tweak aside, it didn't. It's a full 20km further than I've ever run before. In fact I had plenty left in the tank. Putting that injury aside I think I could have gone at least 60km, if not 70km, before crashing if my leg hadn't been a problem. I had that in my legs. I could tell. I don't go fast, but I can go far.
That's what I'm really after here.
And i put that down to the Maffetone Method approach I've been sticking to throughout. A big component of which is 'recovery'. I say that as two years ago I remember training for the 100km hike by doing the same 50km route I just completed. It took about 13.5hours and I was finished by the end. In fact i couldn't do anything for over a week afterwards.
This time around, and after having a hamstring strain as well as tendonitis flare-up, I had 1 day rest and did a 7km walk the following day. Then, only 4 days after that Ultra, I completed a short half hour run yesterday. This would have been unthinkable 12 months ago.
I've studied up a lot, and 'Active Recovery' is a thing. Walk it off. Get the lymphatic system working and blood flowing to the parts that hurt.
It's a fine line between doing harm, and helping heal. Slow pace, loooong warm up, and good quality sleep. But the day after, I feel much better. I'm not a young guy any more. I'll be 47 in a couple of weeks' time, so I'm taking a kinder-to-myself approach.
It's hard as I've always had a competitive streak in me. More so, it's competing with myself and pushing where my limits are. That's always been the same for me. Whether from sport, to work, to life, I've always sought progress. And I am my own worst critic. If it's slower or less than before, I can give myself a very hard time. This can lead me to push too hard, too quickly and not give myself a chance to recover properly until an injury forces me to.
This has resulted in injury time and again. Usually not recovering enough from older injuries only to make the problem worse. It's incredibly frustrating, but the prospect of all this work being undone through not recovering properly is too worrying to ignore. The distance is simply too far to not respect my what my body needs, as failure to do so will result in failure for sure. I'm not going to be winning events any time soon, and I have a very long way to go. It's important that I don't break down, as I'm still dancing a fine line between progressing quickly enough to achieve what I want, and injury getting the better of me thus destroying my chance. Recovery and training/recovering intelligently is the smart thing here. My plan is simple:
- at least 3 non-running days per week
- lots of active stretching, foam rolling, and rehabilitation work 3 times a week
- good work on mobility and stability 3 times a week
- good sleep
- eat clean and well
- Listen to my body, and when it hurts while training then stop (and ice it).
This time I'm being wiser and it's working. Thanks for reading.
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