Over reaching and Under recovering

If there was one concept that stuck with me most this past week it was the notion of over reaching and under recovering. This isn’t a philosophy that is new to me; instead, I think it just finally culminated with hearing the simplistic phrase.

The Ironman calling is strong. It is difficult to enter this sport and within a year NOT begin setting your sights on the goal. It is the pinnacle of our sport. It is like playing professional baseball but never carrying to play in the world series. But triathlon is not a team sport; it is individual. And that there lies the problem.

Over reaching. We all do it. We get a crazy notion to sign up for an Ironman after we have completed 2 sprints and bonked during an oly. Brilliant. In recent years, I have become an advocate of the philosophy that Ironman will always be there and that you should wait until your body is ready. In theory, the average age grouper needs a solid 3-5 of consistent training to build the body to the point that it can sustain the damage Ironman races inflict upon it.

Alas we don’t wait. We want to do it now…and at the first available moment. I fell victim to that desire….that dream. Athletes lose focus of the big picture and that is triathlon should have long term goals. You shouldn’t look at it from season to season. You need a 3-5 year plan and everything works to that goal. Of course, that is easy to say. And I am living proof that the latter is hard to execute. It is called over reaching.

The law of inertia states that an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Enter injury and injury prevention. With overreaching comes the increased likelihood of injury. And that will certainly slow you down. I know this problem too well. I had great Ironman races. I had poor recovery. Both times resulted in injury when I began training again.

Telling a Type A athlete to take a break is difficult. We don’t respond well to bad news. We deny ourselves the truth and avoid medical attention because we don’t want to hear the truth. We give ourselves a couple of days and are ready to get back to training. We are still fueled by the race high and eagerly anticipate tackling the next goal. Under recovering. It is a major problem. Most of us don’t slow down enough to truly recover from what we put our body through. Recovery may be a few days, few weeks or even months. But without proper recovery, we are negating the gains we achieve through training and racing. For it is during the recovery phase that our muscles rebuild and come back stronger and faster.

So there it is…over reaching and under recovering. I would make the case that these are the two biggest issues facing our sport. And the two biggest issues where athletes fail. Wondering why your season isn’t going well? Ask yourself if you are over reaching and under recovering. I am willing to bet you find the truth resting between the two concepts.