Week IM – 13: Active Recovery > Nothing

 

The week started relatively easily this week. On Monday and Tuesday, I did short swims (750m) in the name of “Active Recovery” after WAR. From my own experience, proactively healing an injury is always more effective than doing nothing. That may mean stretching it few times a day,using a foam roller, Physio massage or low intensity swimming. It has been proven to speed musculoskeletal recovery times and the accompanying endorphin increase has the all important mental boost.

I went to the physio on Wednesday morning to get my calfs loosened out. I had tight feet also, apparently. I’ve been instructed to stand on a tennis ball to loosen out the feet and lower leg muscles. On Thursday, I was back to a normal 2.4Km swim set.

This weekend was a big weekend. The first classified as an “Iron Weekend” by Going Long. On Saturday, I did 115Km on the bike and a 15minute sea swim in Portmarnoc. I’d organised to cycle out to Portmarnoc strand with two other hardy souls at 10:30am, so I got up early and did 60Km down to Enniskerry/Bray before that. When we got to Portmarnoc, the sea was mighty cold! Colder than I remember it on Christmas day (and I had no wet suit on then... Perhaps the obligatory yule-tide hot whisky effected the heat perception).

On Sunday I did just over a half marathon, 23Km, in 2:16:00, at an average HR of 67%. I was surprised how tired I was afterwards on Sunday. Perhaps it was the cumulated tiredness of the two days or perhaps I just need to work a lot on long runs over the next few weeks. I’ll do the latter and hope for the former.

This is the half marathon in the Pheonix Park:

In total this week, I did 5.4Km swim, 199Km bike and 23Km running.