The Importance of Recovery

Distance running can be a funny thing. When you’re running well, and mentally in a high point, you want to run more and more, and when you’re at a low point, you want to do less. I say funny, because it seems that for each of these situations, the natural instinct is counter productive to the athlete. Train more when you’re feeling good – and you’ll probably over –do it. Train less when you’re feeling not so good, and there is always the chance of going backwards.

Over the last four weeks, I have found out just how tough it is to mix in running with the ‘real world’. For the last few years, the student life has been a bliss. Sit in a lecture theatre for 15-20 hours a week, train twice a day, and get by on student handouts from the government, and the odd work shift here and there. Now having graduated, and being in a transition year between undergrad and postgrad studies, I have just begun to find out what this much talked ‘real world’ is all about.

Working in a busy café in Leederville has opened my eyes to the work needed to stay afloat economically. Gone are the 730am wake ups, and out for an easy half hour jog. These have been replaced with 5:45am alarms, and a rush into Sayers to get the doors open by 7am. Also, gone is the comfort of the lecture hall chairs – this has been replaced by standing on my feet for 8 hours a day, pushing out 300-400 coffees. Whilst this may not be the ideal type of work for a serious athlete, it is lucky that I love my job, and am enjoying every minute I spend there – it certainly beat stacking shelves in a supermarket.

In light of all this, I have learnt that I need to make some changes in my day to day life Afternoon naps are now a lot more regular, even if only for 30-40 minutes after work. Getting to bed early is also a must, and this has been the hardest thing to adjust to, just so I can get in my 7ish hours of quality sleep.

Not only this though, but I have had to approach my running in a different light. It was drawn to my attention that my easy runs are too hard, my long runs are too quick, and my workouts aren’t as quality as they need to be. I guess, coming form a small place like Perth, where everyone knows everyone, there is competition in every run – someone wants to be the boss. IF we are to get anywhere as runners, we need to learn to recover, and run each run as it is intended.

Training wise, the last week has been fantastic. I’ve been feeling great, but not pushing too hard. The Sunday run at Helena was the most talent laden run I’ve been on in WA, period. In the pack was 3 or 4 3m52sec or quicker 1500m runners, 3 sub 14m50sec 5000m runners, a couple of 1m52sec 800m runners, a world number 2 ranked duathlete, and on the other side of the pipeline, a 2m13 marathoner, who was a member of the 1997 world championships team. The only person missing from the group was the elusive Chris deBoer – I’m sure we’ll hear more from him soon though.

Tuesday’s workout was bush miles. After a full day of work, it was never going to be easy to nut out a good session, and a nap was the best thing that had happened to me that afternoon. Heading out for the warm up my legs felt like bricks. However, with deBoer running half of the mile reps, I managed to make my way around a lap in 5m00.9sec – which Boydy tells me is a first for that loop. Must mean I’m doing something right!