I’m a 1st year triathlete. Upped my farthest run from 5 miles to 16 miles in about a month, bike 3x a week, run 3x a week, etc…
Legs have been getting sore/tired in the past few days after training hard for about 2 weeks (HIM in 4 weeks). Since I’m a noob, should I work through this soreness, or is that a sign a need a few rest days? I went for an easy 30 miler yesterday which helped a bit, but still sore (tough to walk upstairs/downstairs/with heavy work boots). I eat healthy, although I’m trying to get to race weight, so running about 1000 cals short/day.
In short, at what point do you give into soreness/fatigue (are they even the same?) and rest…remember, I’m new to this (ie just getting a taste of consistant training).
Yikes! Did you say you more than tripled your long run and you’re a noob?!? AND you’re cutting back calories (recovery nutrition I mean) AND your 1st HIM is in a month? Sounds like you’re a recipe for injury at this point that is if you’re able to walk upright to the start line. I think rest is appropriate at this point. Do you have a coach? If not, do you have a more experienced friend who could walk you thru your last month? There is a ton of material out there both free and at a small cost on how to train for your 1st HIM. Check it out before you get hurt or burned out! Take care, Jeff
If you are sore it is best to rest. Part of our adaptation to the stress of exercise is a result of healing the micro-injury of exercise. If you are feeling beat up, let those muscles heal. Do some stretching, go for a walk. Fatigue could be a different thing, a bad night’s sleep, a stressful day, allergies, or a result of being over-trained. fatigue often accompanies soreness, but soreness doesn’t need to accompany fatigue. In general, I think we all know when we are being lazy and when we are truly in need of a rest. When in doubt, listen to your body and rest.
I highly disagree. You can’t rest every time you are sore and expect to get better. I find this especially true on the bike. This is where it can be helpful to have a power meter. There are days where I feel like total crap going into the workout. I think I might not be able to execute, then low and behold my power numbers are right in line with where I need them to be for the type of training stress I was hoping for. Sometimes you have to push through feeling like total crap so you can end up with a high quality effort on a given day. Alternatively, there are also days when I feel like crap, can’t hit my numbers, and I just pack it in and say I will live to train hard another day. Learning how to effectively use the PMC in cycling peaks can be quite helpful. Each person is individual in his adaptation to training stress and the amount of recovery time needed. Once you how how you react, then it is fairly simple to know how much stress and recovery you need, as much of it is actually objectively quantifiable data.
I highly disagree. You can’t rest every time you are sore and expect to get better. I find this especially true on the bike. This is where it can be helpful to have a power meter. There are days where I feel like total crap going into the workout. I think I might not be able to execute, then low and behold my power numbers are right in line with where I need them to be for the type of training stress I was hoping for. Sometimes you have to push through feeling like total crap so you can end up with a high quality effort on a given day. Alternatively, there are also days when I feel like crap, can’t hit my numbers, and I just pack it in and say I will live to train hard another day. Learning how to effectively use the PMC in cycling peaks can be quite helpful. Each person is individual in his adaptation to training stress and the amount of recovery time needed. Once you how how you react, then it is fairly simple to know how much stress and recovery you need, as much of it is actually objectively quantifiable data.
Exactly, and a large part of this (especially for a newer athlete) is learning to listen to your body. Fatigue and soreness are to be expected (Especially when ramping up so quickly!!), you need to learn what is normal and what is “Hey! Back off!”
When you start a workout, and you feel fatigue, does it dissipate a short ways into the workout and you can continue? Or do you just feel like another 5 feet and you’re drowning? Does the soreness go away, or are you just rolling into more and more work?
Persistent anything is usually sign that something needs to give, whether it’s volume, intensity, both. I’d recommend taking a complete rest day (or maybe two). It won’t affect your training much, and if you are still sore and fatigued after two days, then it’s a good bet you need to scale back for a bit, race or no race.
The thing that concerns me is the 1000 cal deficit per day. That’s on the verge of crash dieting, and the extra 4 lbs that you save isn’t going to help that much. Stop it. Be happy with another 2-4 lbs in the next month and go into the HIM on a full tank rather than fumes. And, if your body decides you’re starving it, you work at cross purposes since your body will start cannibalizing and hoarding all it can.
I guess we need to define what sore is. I’m a little sore from yesterday’s TT efforts, but I’m still going out for hard endurance rides all weekend. I thing that the advice about powermeters is very good. You may be a little sore, but you can judge if your body is actually weak. I use a PM and there are days when I’s sore, but am super strong. Other days that I’m sore, and cannot make any power. Sore to me is, when it is somewhat painful to flex a muscle, such as one feels after lifting weights after a long break, or after race where you give 100%. I agree with Flanagan that you need to learn your body. Training peaks is fabulous for that. We spring back after wearing ourselves down - as long as it isn’t too far down. Also, I tend to err on side of rest, probably due years of injuries i (might) have avoided by easing up on training. One gets contemplative with age…
Yeah, I think I’ll go up to maintain calories for the next few weeks…don’t remember staying sore for so long when I was at maintenance. FYI I’m 21, 5’8", 150, about 9% bf. I’m deff still trying to learn about my body/mind connection and listening to both. After ramping up hard, then got depressed and tried to work harder to overcome it, I realized that there’s good reason I was feeling down about working out…my body needed time to rest, and I wasn’t listening to it.
The sprint and oly distance I did I got 2nd in my age group, top 10% overall. I love to win, but realize I have a lot of time to become better and “tri” to when them overall.
Never realized the mind-body connection is so tight…If anyone has any good books or resources about how to listen to yourself while training (does this category even exist?), I’d appreciate it. I got “The Bible”, but like the way I train more (ie just go out on a run or bike, then depending how I feel, go hard or easy, or push hard up a hill or tempo stuff, etc…)
Thanks everyone so far…looking forward to more comments!
Never realized the mind-body connection is so tight…If anyone has any good books or resources about how to listen to yourself while training (does this category even exist?), I’d appreciate it. I got “The Bible”, but like the way I train more (ie just go out on a run or bike, then depending how I feel, go hard or easy, or push hard up a hill or tempo stuff, etc…)
Then just give it time. Training by RPE (Rate Perceived Exertion) will develop that sense for you. One thing I did used to do was a lot of self hypnosis/visualization to picture races, events, etc. and that helped immensely, along with a few minutes every day of some simple meditation/calming exercises.
Glad to see you are taking the calorie count back up…a deficit of 500 or so would be good, but really, 4 weeks out from an HIM is not the best time to be trying to lose weight.
As for the pain vs fatigue thing, I think fatigue is a better indicator of when to take a break. Muscle pain is a necessary evil when pushing our body’s…microtears etc. My recommendation is two-fold.
Make sure you are including enough active recovery workouts in your training mix to aid the body in rebuilding after extreme training stresses.
Ice baths…they are great for increasing blood flow to help repair muscles and clear toxins. I started doing them recently on a recommendation from my RMT, and they make a huge difference! I raced this past weekend in a Sprint, went moderately hard but not complete race pace. I did a series of hot bath/cold shower that night, an easy swim and active recovery ride with another ice shower on the Monday, and had a great Tempo run on the Tuesday. I’m in the last week of my build phase, and it was really important to nail that tempo run. I’m pretty certain the ice bath stuffed helped speed up my recovery.
Good luck
Glad to see you are taking the calorie count back up…a deficit of 500 or so would be good, but really, 4 weeks out from an HIM is not the best time to be trying to lose weight.
And I’ll add one more tidbit that freaks some people out and causes them to be underfueled on race day…
Don’t be surprised to GAIN a couple of pounds in the last couple of weeks before your race. I try to hide my scale for the last two weeks before a HIM or IM. It just drives me nuts to watch my weight move around during the taper.
When I was 21, I was relatively indestructible, too. “Taper” meant laying off the beers right before a big race. Now, I see upping your longest run from 5 mi to 16 mi in about a month and I cringe. Makes my joints hurt just reading that. You may be able to get away with it for awhile, but if you want to stay in the game over the long haul, you gotta resist the temptation to fly too close to the sun all the time. Rest is not only OK, it’s necessary. Old saying is that it’s better to be undertrained than overtrained.