[lucapontarolo]

Hi all!
I bought the awesome Training For the Uphill Athlete book, and at 40, I’m still Learning and enjoying mountain running. I especially do KV and sub-50km races.

I have two races planned at the end of September, and the preparation was going very well.
Last Saturday I made a hard workout, breaking my PR on a 1h15m ascent (1600m D+ steep uphill route), with awesome feelings.
On Sunday, another good workout (less intense of course), and….

It’s two days that I feel off. I have a cold, general pain, and I was forced to cancel two sessions.
It’s strange because it never happened before, such a fast decline from feeling perfect, to feeling very broken.

Any advices? I guess I need some more days off until the flu goes away, it’s a pity because it’s going to ruin part of the fitness level I was at.

Any other tips for a faster recovery?

Thanks all!

Topic

[briguy]

briguy on September 17, 2019 at 6:46 am #28580

Plenty of sleep, try to eat “clean” and rest, then let the Flu run its course. Be thankful it didn’t hit on race week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on September 17, 2019 at 6:46 pm #28612

This is actually very common to see. When ever you set a PR (or have some kind of breakthrough workout) you should immediately, the next day take it very easy, only some recovery workout. The PR told you that you were at a peak of fitness. But it also cause a lot of fatigue. This fatigue was masked by your good feelings of being so fit. By putting another big stress on top the next day your immune system became very depressed and some illness got hold of you. I’ve seen this happen a hundred times. The only thing you can do now is to rest and get well again. DO NOT TRAIN WHILE YOU HAVE THIS FLU.

I have seen this so often that whenever an athlete tells me he is feeling like Superman I tell him/her to back off and take some easy days.

Scott

[lucapontarolo]

lucapontarolo on September 18, 2019 at 5:06 am #28622

Thank you so much Scott for your explanation, that’s interesting stuff I hadn’t considered in depth.

The tricky part during maximum peak reaching period is that:
– If you work hard, improve, then performance declines, you are probably doing too much Z3-Z4, so you need to recover more and re-introduce Z1 for aerobic maintenance (as learned from the book).

But…

– If you work hard and make big gains, like in my episode, you still need to back off when in doubt.

After Superman day, the temptation to prove it again maybe 4-5 days later to see if you can run those intervals even faster, or break the PR again, is too big, and could in fact result in an additional fitness step upwards. I mean, it could be beneficial.

It’s a tricky balance I’m still trying to understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on September 18, 2019 at 2:53 pm #28643

After Superman day, the temptation to prove it again maybe 4-5 days later to see if you can run those intervals even faster, or break the PR again, is too big, and could in fact result in an additional fitness step upwards. I mean, it could be beneficial.

No, it’s very unlikely. It ‘s not realistic to think that you can set PRs every 4-5 days.

Two quotes come to mind:

Trees don’t grow to the sky.

AND

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

With respect to the second quote, most people are greedy when training and fearful when racing. Those that can reverse that will be much more successful.

When you have those type of Superman moments, you need to immediately back off as Scott J. has said. And I say this knowing the temptation and having made the same mistake many times. It’s just not worth it, and it will never play out the way that we fantasize it will.

If you take a more humble and gradual approach your long-term results will far surpass anything more aggressive (because the aggressive approach will always break down and waste training time.)