Recovery Week Weenie

While I've been doing triathlons for 7 years, I have only been really training in an organized fashion for 3 seasons. The first 4 seasons went something like this:"Hey, wanna brick today? Okay. How about a swim? Naw, I suck at it--let's ride instead." No training logs, just riding and running the local tri course as fast as possible. Periodization? What's that? I remember getting in just one last 20 mile hammerfest on the bike the day before an A race "just to get those bike miles in". I had pretty decent bike splits and even respectable 5K's on the back end of the local sprints, but when I moved up to the Olympic distance I had some spectacular bonking-crash-and-burn meltdowns with only 2K left on the run.

So when I thought I'd grown up enough to do my first HIM, I read Joe Friel's Triathlon Training Bible and found Coach Mary. 2K to the finish line was unpleasant, but staring down 13 miles or a marathon with no glycogen, mental toughness, or fitness left would be a death march. Base, build, peak, and taper--they all made sense, but recovery week? During my first base training for my first HIM, I remember thinking,"Ride in Zone 2, run embarrassingly slow/best alone...then RECOVER? From what? If I go any slower, I'll be catatonic!" No, no, no, no! I was not going to be a Recovery Week Weenie---one of those people who just can't chill out, must hammer all the time, suffer their insolence with injuries. I'm much more serene and sensible than that.

Fast forward to Build phase for IM training: Now I'm hanging on by my fingernails , clawing my way to those blessed recovery weeks. I think,"Yep, there's gotta be something to these cuz I'm crying out for recovery week and Momma..." For 2 seasons, I had a recovery week scheduled after 3 weeks of building on volume or intensity. You'd think I'd have learned something from 2 consecutive injury-free seasons punctuated with personal triathlon victories.

This season there are no scheduled recovery weeks. The serene and sensible part of me finds this to be a great opportunity to really tune into my body and figure out when it needs to rest and rebuild. The Recovery Week Weenie/Hammer-All-the-Time-Meathead part of me thinks,"Awesome! No recovery needed EVER! Show no weakness! If you use force and it isn't working, you're not using enough! Charcoal doesn't bleed!" and other macho neanderthal things that surgeons say.

So my first recovery week was around Christmas when I felt forced to slow down due to an upper respiratory infection. I cursed children with runny noses and the inefficacy of this year's flu vaccine. It's been 8 weeks since that recovery week and--you guessed it!--it's time for another one. This entire last week there's been a battle royale between the gravitational pull of the couch on my ass vs. the HTFU-Guilt monster in my head. I came home from work utterly drained of energy, but not sore in the muscles and feeling good within 20 minutes on the bike, run, or water. I was able to hit my watts on Sweet Spot rides, but noticed that I was on the slow side with E-pace and 100's on the swim. "No, no, no, no!" I said, "Do today what you won't so that someday I'll do what you can't...er, something like that. Anyone can workout when they feel great, but a champion works out when they don't...um, right?" So I would rally off the couch and Git'r done until yesterday when I woke up feeling like a truck hit me then backed up and park on top of my head. I did some laundry and cleaned the floors then it was GAME OVER. As it lay dying, the HTFU-Guilt monster cried, "You should've done your run and swim instead of housework if that's all the energy you had...."

So here I am: first day of recovery week. This week at work is blessedly light; and the only pressing To-do items are taxes and cleaning the bathrooms. Alright, I'll say it: It's nice to have time to chill out, rest, be serene and sensible. I'm getting in tune with myself, getting to know when I need a break. Recovery doesn't mean being a slacker. Yep, I mean those all things...mostly.