Training fatigue and hot/cold recovery

It has been a testing last few days, both physically and mentally, with the Saturday Morning Brick Session and the ongoing training since then. Yesterday I had one of the flattest Ironman training days I have had in a while. I felt tired when I woke for swimming and once in the pool I knew it was going to be a slog. I felt some residual fatigue from the 2km swim the night before and it didn't warm out. We did what I would usually find a pretty tame set of 12x100m on 1:30, I struggled from the get go and by the end was getting no rest, I felt like i was swimming in caramel sauce...mmm caramel sauce. It was hard on my body and probably harder on my ego. But, I have to look at it in the context of the big weekend I had and learn not to let individual sessions or sets overshadow the big picture. I am sure I am going to have a lot of sessions where it seems like I am going backwards or just don't have the energy to perform up to my expectations, but, who cares how fast I go for 12x100m eight months out from my goal Ironman...?

I had a couple of solid run sessions today, both including intervals building to max effort. On a positive note I felt pretty damn good this morning and not too bad this evening. I haven't felt any pain in the 'Old Rec Fem' in a few weeks and I'm continuing with regular physio appointments to improve my core strength and posture with a hope to keep future injuries at bay and to increase my performance.

I have been using hot/cold recovery lately and I feel that it is helping me to recover faster and train day in day out. I either do 3-5 sets in the shower of 30secs cold water and 1min hot water, or 3-4mins in a hot bath and 1min in a cold shower. The idea behind hot/cold recovery is that the repeated constriction and dilation of leg muscle tissues pumps wastes out of your legs and helps reduce inflammation and bleeding in the muscles. I am still unsure how much of a benefit it is. I feel it does help to a degree, it reduces the muscle pain I feel, which in turn probably helps me train harder. Whether it increases my performance or not, I'm not sure. One thing I am sure of is that I would like to find some sort of waterproof underwear, because, ice cold water is not welcome on some parts of my body no mater how therapeutic it is. I have considered cutting leg holes in a shower cap, but I would have to kick my own ass if I was getting around with a shower cap on for a nappy.

There has been some research into the benefits of hot/cold recovery, if your interested I have placed a link to a good article on the Peak Performance online website below.

Hot/Cold - Don't pour cold water over hydrotherapy

Insomnia and early squad sessions

Man I'm tired. For some reason unknown to me I woke up this morning at 3:45am and couldn't get back to sleep. I had to be up by 4:45am to go to swim squad, so I lay there for an hour thinking how much it sucked that I had to get up so early. Squad training was tough, we've done a fair bit of speed work lately and today the coach wanted to see how/if our endurance had held up through it. We did sets of 25m sprints followed by 10 x 100m on the 1:30. This was no problem, but it didn't end there, we then did the same set twice more, but with the 100m on the 1:25 instead. It hurt and I blew up at some point and lost count and when you lose count in a big set like that it just adds to the misery. Because not only are you hurting like hell, you have no idea when it is going to end. You just look at the people around you silently pleading that they don't push off for the next repeat. It is a great feeling when it done though.

Day off work after yesterdays Mag Trainer day of hell

Just got in from this mornings swim squad. I was feeling pretty flat when I got up at 4:40am but once I got in the pool I felt pretty strong and despite the aches in my legs, I had a solid session. I'm glad its the last day of the school holidays, because the pint sized pool demons that invaded our squad two weeks ago will go back to burning up the pool wherever they came from and let me rebuild my self esteem. I admire their swimming skills but being carved up by kids that look about 12-13 is killing my ego. Be gone little critters!

Yesterday morning was a strength session on the Mag Trainer which was reasonably painful, but was short and sweet. It was an hour including 10min warm up and down with a bunch of 20sec max efforts with the tension and gears cranked to the max, on a two minute cycle. Coach says that they will stretch out to five minute plus intervals as we get closer to Ironman, eek!

Last night I went along to the Mag Trainer group session. Usually its held in a gym in the city but we didn't have keys this time for some reason. when I arrived everyone was debating flagging the session, I said “Nah, we can do it outside over here.” So we did our session on the footpath outside the gym under the light. It was actually pretty sweet, I normally cook in the gym, outside last night was nice and cool. We did a 15min warmup then 4 x (3 x 5 min @ 90, 110, 120 rpm), it was a full on cadence session. The goal of the workout was to develop the ability to pedal efficiently at high cadences. The optimum cadence to cycle Ironman at is around 90-100 rpm, which is around the same cadence you should run at. The theory is that if you cycle at the same cadence you run at, you will adapt to running faster when transitioning from the cycle to the run.

I had a day off owing to me from Easter, so I thought that since I was struggling so much the last few days, that this would be a perfect opportunity to rest up and prepare for this weekends training. It feels good to do a training session then head home to relax and recover. I guess this is how a professional athlete feels, heh.