- Morning Trainiacs.
I...
I hurt.
I'm in a lot of pain right now.
So I just had the biggest weekend
of training that I've ever done.
Six hour 11 minute 200 K bike... on Zwift,
hence the kit,
and then a 30 K run the next day.
Nine hours of training so uh.
I'm recovering here.
We're gonna talk about how after a race,
you need to go about recovering start to finish
to get you back to the next bit of training,
the next race,
basically absorb that race so you can come back
be stronger and not overtrain.
I'm on the edge.
(upbeat dance music)
All right Trainiacs,
I've got some charts,
I've got some graphs,
I got some swim trunks that I'm
basically living in these days.
Life is good,
life is really really good.
Grace you too, come on.
(dog collar jingles)
Man I got some cute dogs.
So what you do after a race is very critical,
because very few of you,
unless you are just total bucket list triathlete
that is looking to do a triathlon,
never do one again,
drop the Speedo walk away,
in that case this isn't really going to pertain to you.
But for most people,
we either have an off season to get to,
or we have another race to get to.
So we need to make sure that when we do a race,
what we do after allows that race to actually
build our fitness so that we can come back,
and do the next race actually stronger
than we did that last one.
If you do it incorrectly,
you can lose a ton of fitness,
basically lose the training effect that
that last race gave you.
You might overcook yourself if you come back too early.
You might under cook yourself and not be prepared
for the next race if you come back too late,
so getting this fine dance of coming back from
a race is fairly critical to get right.
This is where the charts come in.
So I'm gonna start with this protocol that happens
in three parts the day after the race.
Basically right here we have your race date,
and it's what you're gonna do the day after.
And that's the first part,
that first one to two days after a race,
you go one two,
is stage one.
Your readiness at this point to race is actually
going to feel probably not too bad,
if you've gone hard enough in the race.
The DOMS,
the Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness,
might not set in so you might feel like
piss and vinegar so you might feel like you're up here,
but what we want is we actually want,
I'm gonna use yellow...
for what we actually wanna do.
What we actually wanna do is keep
our workout intensity down here.
So in those first two days,
some of the best things you can do are
a really light bike,
a really light swim.
I would probably stay away from running,
because running is fairly compressive on the body.
It also beats up your muscles a fair bit more.
So even though you might feel good,
what I would recommend are these light exercises,
like cycling and swimming.
Particularly swimming with fins to lengthen out the body,
and allow the muscles to just nicely recover,
and kind of settle into a good pattern again.
So that you can come back and not be just totally
gummed up if you haven't done anything.
So it's important to do something for maybe 15,
20 minutes.
That's more than enough.
Just getting the blood flowing is
going to keep that recovery process going.
Now next after that two day period
where you really just wanna be somewhat active
for about 15 to 20 minutes,
the Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness,
and your fatigue is probably really going to settle in.
So your readiness is going to drop.
And it might drop over the course of three,
four, five, six days.
I'm looking at posts right now from pros
who raced nine days ago,
and the fatigue is just settling in now.
So in that second phase of training,
we're talking about somewhere in between about
that three day mark and maybe...
two weeks.
14 days after a race,
and in that time your readiness might just slowly go down.
But what we wanna do on the workout intensity
side of things is we wanna just kind of feel it out.
So some days you might feel really good
and challenge yourself,
some days you might feel really bad.
So you gotta really listen to your body.
If you wake up and you feel like,
you feel like this guy,
you feel like these guys after the seven K
run we did today,
just be a little bit active.
Go and do something light.
If you feel great then maybe you can introduce
a little bit of intensity,
or a little bit of challenge.
But don't get to the point in that first two weeks,
where it feels like you're digging yourself a hole.
Even if you've got a race coming up,
it's more important to get your body fresh.
Now this 14 days is going to be on average
somewhere around there for about a half Iron Man.
Might be as much as 21 days for an Iron Man.
Might be as little as about six or seven days
for a sprint or an Olympic.
The key thing to do is to feel it out,
and start feeling out where that readiness is.
Like how is the body feeling?
Start to work out and just be prepared
to dial it way back or do a couple of the hard intervals,
and then shut it down.
Because we always wanna make sure that when we come back,
we're rearing to go.
We're chomping at the bit to get into it.
And that's where the third stage of coming
back from a race happens.
So in that third stage from coming back from a race,
what you will find is around that time that I just said,
your body's slowly going to start feeling like
it can accept a little bit more and more challenge.
It's going to be more or less ready.
At this point you don't necessarily want to
go like this and just get right back into the training.
You wanna follow along what your body is feeling,
and then gradually build into it.
So maybe you start with one or two harder intervals
on your hard bike day,
the first day that you come back right here.
Maybe you do just a slightly long ride,
and then gradually build it up.
Because you do have some underlying fatigue,
if you go too far and overreach too quickly,
you might send your readiness back down to here,
in which case you're never going to actually be
absorbing that race that you did before,
and you're never going to be getting ready
for that next race that you've got coming up.
So what you've gotta do is you've gotta take that
recovery after a race in three parts.
The first three days,
accept you're not going to do any real workout,
you're just going to move a little bit
to get the blood flowing.
Then for the next three to 12 days,
to about like say two weeks after that race,
feel out what you're capable of but
really just rest.
Do a little bit each day,
but only do what you feel is quite easy.
Don't finish a workout feeling fatigued.
Then after that period,
maybe it's seven days for a sprint,
maybe it's 21 days for an Iron Man,
then start gradually building back up more and more.
And not until that time when you feel like
you're ending a workout and you're like,
I got this I don't need a nap at the end of the day,
I'm not thrashed the next day.
You can start gradually building back up,
and at that point you will be using
the race that you just did for the fitness of
the next races that you've got going forward.
Because you recovered from it,
and you will pull that fitness into your next race.
Making you a more badass athlete for your next race,
and the next race after that.
So there you go Trainiacs,
that's what you need to be doing after a race.
Now if it is the end of a year,
you just stretch those out a little bit,
so that you get yourself a nice four
to eight week off season,
but the process is the same.
Still in those three parts and actually on
Team Trainiac,
teamtrainiac.com you can go check it out,
give it a shot.
We have all of this automated
so that you know every single day
with prompts of kind of when you should be
thinking about getting back into it,
because frankly we can't just go hard in the paint
every single day like these guys.
Ooh, sorry guys.
So go out there,
have fun in your races.
Absorb that training.
Get back into it when you're ready to go.
And if you aren't yet subscribed,
hit that subscribe button below.
Later Trainiacs.
Sorry.
I'm sorry.