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Recovery after 2 HIM's in 13 days

Any thoughts on this ?

I've essentially taken a week off, with a 2 hour bike yesterday ( last HIM was a week prior)...the bike yesterday felt good until I did 2x5' at FTP and my legs were dead from then on. What I'm seeing is that the HIM recovery week as prescribed doesn't seem to be enough. With the tapers and recovery I haven't done any extended FTP work in about 6 weeks,.

Next "A" race is Augusta 70.3 on 9/26, so I'm exactly 20 weeks out. Planning to do some sprints along the way as well.

Thanks,

Bill

Comments

  • Recovery needs, like taper, seem to be highly variable not only between individuals, but also from race to race and year to year for an individual. Five years ago, I took over three months to recover from an IM; two years ago, I hardly needed a week to recover from a five week window of 3 Olys followed by an HIM. And then last year, I took about 5 weeks to recover from a spring IM, and then I needed less than 10 days to go from a DNF fall  IM (10 miles of "running") to full training for an IM 6 weeks after the first, where I performed very well. Go figure.

    What I've learned from all this is that I'm the only one who can tell me how much recovery to take. It requires (a) a willingness to test yourself like you did with the FTP intervals and (b) a willingness to act on the feedback you get from your body, whichever direction it points you. Sounds like you still need more recovery time, and have the luxury of no big races staring you in the face. Keep checking and monitoring what you're capable of. The trouble comes "when your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill". (That's from "the Old Folks' Boogie", by Little Feat, ca. 1975)

     

  • Gotta love Little Feat! Dixe Chicken!
  • Thanks Al...good stuff.
  • What Al said, the more time you can take -- and you have 20 weeks -- the better. I'd stay away from FTP for about 2 weeks, just riding and swimming and running. Maybe do some fun exploration riding, etc., in new places but minimal goals. You have plenty of time to do more work later!
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