What are us triathletes like? We dread losing fitness. "I don’t want to lose my fitness" is perhaps one of the most commonly uttered statement by triathletes. I have no actual data to support this, but given the number of times I have heard it (and expressed it myself!) I am reasonably confident that it must be true.
I think triathletes have a dreaded fear that between the time they close their eyes at night and awake in the morning they have lost inordinate amounts of fitness. A day off from training is a triathletes nightmare – we can almost feel the fitness being sucked out of our bodies!
The meaning of fitness varies from person to person. Are you fit because you can ride a century? Are you fit when you race to your potential? Are you fit because you can achieve most of your workouts or goals? No matter what your definition of fitness is, it does not disappear as quickly as the sunburn from your last race - FACT!
Breaks in training occur for a number of reasons, whether it is from injury, work, travel or simply some much needed time off. And, unless you have taken an excessive amount of time away from training, you are not going to come back as a deconditioned couch potato. Here are the facts.
Most people confuse the terms "fitness" and "performance status". In other words, when we perform well, we typically say we have a very high level of fitness. That is true, to a point. However, it is just a little bit more complicated than that. When we train, our bodies become more fit, but we also get more tired. In the midst of a heavy training block, how many times do we yearn for a little nap or cancel social events with family and friends because coming home at 10pm is too late? It happens, yes?
When we train or race a lot, our fitness becomes somewhat "masked" by how beat up we feel. The perfect example is the post Ironman fatigue and soreness syndrome. You couldn’t and shouldn’t train in the days following an Ironman. This time off doesn’t mean you are losing huge amounts of hard-earned fitness, it's just that your fitness is being hidden by tiredness, which would lead to a decrease in performance status if you tried to race again too soon (it’s also being hidden by the damage the Iron distance racing does to the body. It would not be unreasonable to consider yourself “mildly injured” and in need of recovery immediately following a long course race).
To perform well, consistently, you need regular bouts of rest. If you are going out and killing bike ride after bike ride (TurboMan of old I think!), and run after run, you don't really know how well you can perform, because you are constantly fatigued. This is why athletes sometimes have a great race after a layoff due to that minor injury, work craziness, or interference from other life factors. The layoff allowed the athlete to shed a great deal of fatigue. This is why tapering for a race works. You shed your fatigue, preserve most of your fitness and are then able to smash a race. Now, if you were to do some fancy maths (which is beyond me), you would find that you did lose a small amount of fitness during a training layoff. However, if you are training a lot, this loss is tiny in comparison to how much fatigue you lose.
Recent research suggests that the average age group triathlete can shed two thirds of their fatigue between 2 and 7 days. In comparison, it can take longer than 30 days to lose two thirds of their fitness. Get the idea? Your fitness hangs around a long time. How many times have you PB'd after having an enforced lay off, I know I have! It's a different matter if you have actually been ill, of course. 7 days of absolute bed rest with the flu or something is going to have a much more significant effect in terms of loss of fitness and performance.
The take home message is "don't sweat the small stuff". Those couple of days you need to take off when you're moving house (Sags), or when work delivers a tight deadline or when you have a visit from the in-laws, will probably just help you really crush your next workout! Train smart and rest well bloggers!
5 comments:
An excellent post young Frank; a timely reminder for those who may be tempted to overtrain or take insufficient rest and recovery. I don't think I ever overtrained, though, I've always gone by the mantra "It is better to be 5% undertrained than 2% overtrained".
Excellent Frank, I touched on this a bit myself the other day.
I'm certainly living proof that you go a lot better on a lot less. All about quality not quantity and quality rest is right up there.
Hope you are taking your own advice as you count down the last few weeks to Renesburg :-)
I'll be blogging on "the taper" specifically later in the week.
It's 3 weeks now for my A race, important times indeed, I will be fresh come race day, don't worry about that. :-)
4 weeks to my B race so I await your taper post with great interest.
I think there is a huge myth surrounding the taper, so many people taper 3 weeks out and arrive at the start line fresh but unfit. Or they do this 3 week long taper and then get caught up in the atmosphere and hammer the bike 1 or 2 days out as they see other "experienced" athletes doing this, so they assume they must do the same. Wrong!
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