I think Boulder is experiencing the Bizzaro (sp?) Winter. We had a pretty mellow February followed by a warm three weeks in March that allowed me to ride my bike almost anywhere. Then the days of winter returned with that 18" dump on the last week of March and now they are calling for 10-24 inches tomorrow. I want the moisture (droughts are much, much worse), but rain might be more welcomed at this point. For anyone racing the Haystack TT on Saturday... ...they said it would be a go if there wasn't snow on the road. Good Luck with that.
I went for a run this morning north of town on my usual secret route. I was chugging along doing my run/walk thing when I happened upon a few Kenyans that were out laying it down on this damp morning. I got a chuckle as I cut one my walk breaks short when I saw them round the corner. I proceeded to PB a 400 as they went by just so it looked like I was doing a long run at their pace (I still fell short). But I digress...
Mr AC has written a fantastic blog this week following his two week trip. Its funny because I was intending to ask him to write an article specifically aimed at the "science of recovery." In other words, what does it actually mean to recover. We might know what it feels like to be recovered, but most of us without Ex Phys degrees probably don't actually know the specifics of what happens in our bodies after we stress it repeatedly.
You can read the blog here. (But be polite and finish reading my blog first).
Recovery is a tricky thing. We all need it to improve, but where do you draw the line on when you want to push through fatigue instead of rest? To be honest, I'm always tinkering with that line. I am an experiment of one and I always want to know how much I can tolerate so that I can maximize my fitness. Unfortunately, I occassionally have to get more tired than I would like to know that I need to cut a bit out on the next round.
What I had not done enough of, until recent years, is proactively help my body recover. Its not enough to hammer away and then sit around and wait to bounce back. Ultimately, I was selling myself short on what I was capable of doing. What really got me working more effectively to promote recovery was moving to Boulder full time. I have been coming to Boulder (and altitude) since 2002, but I only moved here full time in the Spring of 2007.
I know that living at 5500 feet affects my recovery and the amount of work that I can do. Living at sea level seemed to allow me to be slightly more aggressive with my training, but doing the same here left me FLAT. This made me more conscious of how (and when) I placed my key sessions in a week and what would be required of me to bounce back. If I overdid a session, a day, or a week, I had to pay for it.
Learn how to listen to your body and then help it to recover quickly. I like playing Uno and throwing cards, but that's just me.
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I'm now part of the twittering world like many of you. If you follow along you can find out fun things like what I had for dinner or whether I got final jeopardy right that day (or both!).
www.twitter.com/justindaerr
-jd