Recovery

Recovery – from everything I read about multi-sports – is just as important as the training itself and often the easiest part to look past.

Last Saturday was my scheduled long-run day and, as planned, I ran 15 miles. Weather was great, but unfortunately from that point on I was disappointed, because I was looking to run 7:20-7:30/mile average and immediately fell behind. Which meant trying to play catch up for the rest of the run. Ultimately, I finished with a 7:40-745 average, which is good training run, just not where I wanted to be.

After my run, it was off to Costco with my youngest, Zoe. Then back to pick up her sister for a trip to Nana and Papa S & L to help with construction on their new addition. Now, when I say construction I don’t mean painting and decorating, I mean brick and mortar and the whole nine yards…literally. Anyways…to Nana & Papa’s where I spent the rest of the day shingling the new roof, which I do say looks pretty good since it was my first foray into shingling a roof.

As a side note, when not triathlon-ing you can find me working around our very own “This Old House” and tackling such projects. Plus, Anna’s dad lets me play with cool heavy machinery and nail guns, which is every boy’s dream.

I digress…so roofing all afternoon…then on the way back home I get a call from some friends who are going out for some drinks. At this point, I am pretty convinced I am not going out, as the day is beginning to catch up with me and in the back of my head I am thinking about getting a bike ride in on Sunday.

However, as Anna can tell you, I have a difficult time sitting still. So after a dinner with the girls and quick attempt at a blog post which never got published, I rallied and was off to Tremont.

While out, I meet up with another friend, which ultimately leads to me strolling in to my home about 3:00 am (Note: I told Anna I wanted to be in by 12:30). Now I know everyone is thinking I was probably strolling in a little worse for wear at that hour, but actually, I was good. It was just good conversation with an old friend.

I of course was wide awake when I got home, so I watched some bad TV and went to bed about 3:30.

Let’s just say at 4:30, when Zoe rolled into our room for Mommy, that one hour of sleep had not completely refreshed me. Luckily, I was able to fall back to sleep until about 7:30, which generally would be sleeping in.

Now the whole day before, I was going back forth between having a recovery day or getting a ride in. That decision was made for me when I awoke to throbbing ankles, sore shoulders and everything else that comes from a hard training day.

I roll downstairs for breakfast where I begrudgingly admit my “day off” plans to Anna, which is the same conversation that takes place every scheduled recovery day in our house, because I become a little psycho about losing that day of training.

At this point Anna says, “You know, you’ve got to put this part on your blog, too. You can’t always tell people how great you feel and that training is a piece of cake.”

So this whole long-winded diatribe really started with that simple comment, and now we are here. What is the point? It really just boils down to the importance of a recovery day.

It paid off for my run today, because my legs were back and my times were down from Saturday. I just went off on a 70 minute run and purposely didn’t follow my normal course, which somehow makes it a little more carefree. Overall, my legs felt great on a day’s rest and I was able string some 7:20 miles together.

Editor’s note: I appreciate being quoted warmly and accurately, even if I did have to edit the punctuation on my own remarks. “I’m not saying anything else with the writer here.” – Almost Famous