Recovery Weeks

Earlier this week, I got an email from Jonathon Savage asking my thoughts about how tapering but then racing affected my overall training.

Jon, I hope I get your question answered. If I missed it, let me know.

 

Well, the "marathon" aside, the last couple of weeks would not be something that I would normally want to do in the middle of a training cycle.

First of all, I am not a huge fan of recovery weeks. The body adapts to stress so the more stress maintained or applied, the more the body will adapt to it.

But personally, I believe recovery weeks are more for a runner's mental recovery than physical recovery. Doing hard workouts week end week out is extremely draining mentally and I have come to believe that it is important to give yourself that mental break.

That being said, I like the approach where I maintain the same mileage but I alter the intensity. As I increase the intensity of my workouts, then the more mentally focused I need to be. So the inverse seems to be true. If I maintain the same mileage, but log some easy miles then my brain gets a chance to bounce back. And to some extent, my body gets the same opportunity to recovery because of the lower intensity workouts.

In the last couple of weeks, I reduced first the mileage and then the intensity and this has left me feeling as if I was starting over.

Rather than being fresh and eager to race and train I feel like I am launching into my marathon training back in early December.

But I like to think that I learn from my mistakes. As I design my upcoming training plans, I will use something similar to what I described above.

 

 

Thoughts on training plans from the Cool Down Runner