The Value of Recovery Days!

Run for over fifty years and you’re bound to eventually learn a few things. One such lesson is that being tired from a workout is not the same as being worn out from not having a sufficient recovery from your workouts. I can distinctly recall races where what I called “tired legs” limited my performance and in some cases, led to an injury.

This essential lesson is the topic of today’s post.

Walking with Rick?

There’s more to recovery than “not running.” As I’ll delve into, recovery is what allows our body to not only repair tissue damage from our workouts, but also to incorporate the fitness gains from those workouts.

Recovery days have always been difficult for me. Up until recently, I would attempt to remain active during my “off days” from running with several miles of walking or some other activity. The rationale behind that stemmed from a desire to burn enough calories to address overblown concerns about weight.

I’m now slowly realizing that it’s most important to “listen” to what my body is saying I should do for recovery as opposed to reaching a targeted number of steps on my Garmin. How my legs feel is a stronger indicator of just what I should or shouldn’t be doing on those days. And that will vary with each of us - contingent on factors such as age and conditioning.

However, to acquire a broader sense of Recovery, I’ve prepared the following guidelines.

1. Incorporate Recovery as Part of Your Overall Training. The reason for this is simple. Every run we do creates some damage to tissues in our legs. Recovery allows our bodies to make repairs to muscle fibers, restore glycogen as well as strengthen ligaments and tendons. Without recovery, even that minor damage can add to a much more serious injury.

2. Make Easy Days Truly Easy Days. Eighty percent of our running should be easy days or workouts. That makes it much easier for our body to initiate those repairs I mentioned above.

3. Know that Sleep is the Best Method of Recovery. This one makes a lot of sense. With our minds in “la la land,” our bodies can shift to full speed on tissue repair, reducing mental fatigue along with improving our immune system. All of us should be landing somewhere between seven to nine hours for a stronger recovery. Another consideration is that the harder we train and/or the older we are, our sleep target should veer to that higher end.

4. Accept that Age Changes Recovery. Along those lines from the previous bullet point, the older we get, the more recovery our body requires. Another “rule of thumb” suggests that two easy days should follow a hard workout. Likewise, more trips around the sun translates into fewer hard workouts per week as well as planning some “cutback” weeks where we taper back.

5. Consider Recovery Days as Training Days. We may not be running on these days, but we should think about what do on those days in terms of the recovery our bodies require in much the same manner we plan our running. Or putting it another way, resting is not a sin!

6. Realize the Need for Mental Recovery. You don’t need me to tell you that running is more than a physical task. There’s a strong mental component to successful racing and training that also cannot be overlooked. We need to let our minds relax and simply enjoy a run without being preoccupied with pace, cadence and other factors. That can mean backing away from pace targets, race goals and even structured workouts.

7. Plan on Recovery Following an Injury. This has become the mantra for my training. After months of no or minimal runner, after seeing some initial progress, I wanted to pick up both the pace and miles. But doing so brought on a couple minor barks from various muscles reminding me that I need to continue a slow, thoughtful return to running. Give my body all the time it needs for healing. I also need to remember that there is zero need to make up for lost time.

8. Look for the Warning Signs of an Insufficient Recovery. This is the “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!” component of these guidelines. If you’re experiencing an increased heart rate, consistently heavy legs, declining performances and continued soreness, it’s possible your body is not receiving fully recovering and you may need to adjust workouts accordingly.

So, What Should I Do on a Recovery Day?

Yeah, I’ve kind of dodged this question. That’s because I’m still working it out. The best I can say is that it depends on your training and conditioning. When I eased carefully back into running following my surgery, a three-mile walk on the “off” days became a morning ritual. That it was a colder spring with minimal yard work also made the walks a consistent way to burn calories. But now that we’re into the summer and I’ve as much outside work as I want, I’m far less inclined to do the walks now.

Perhaps the best means of determining what’s appropriate during your recovery is seeing how your body responds with your next workout. If you’re refreshed and comfortable, then you did it right. If not, taper it back more.

The Big Picture

Wrapping this all up, I would say that we can look at Recovery less as an interruption in training than a vital component of that training. Those are my thoughts. What about you? Any experiences or thoughts you’d like to share on this topic? I look forward to them in the comments below.

And thanks for reading the blog! Best wishes with your running! And recovery!