Learning to Recover - 27 Weeks Out From the Leadville100

What’s up everyone! In an effort to get some unique fitness content on my website, I thought I’d document my training journey leading up to the Leadville100 in August. As I progress through my training program, I will share some things that I am experiencing, hopefully saving you some time on your own training journey.

Currently, I am about 3–4 weeks into my run plan. My coach, Junko Kuzakawa, will be aiming to complete the Leadville100 for the 10th time this year… ten times. Unreal. Talk about a good role model and a coach you can place some trust in. When I was looking for a coach for this race, I wanted to make sure I chose someone that had experience and expertise. While I want to feel confident in my training plan, it was also important to me to find a coach who I could learn from along the way so that I could feel confident working with others preparing for such a prestigious race. Junko is definitely that coach. If you get an opportunity to work with her, take it.

What I’ve learned in the last month-long block of running:

Recovery practices should hold more value than most people, myself included, give it. I recently heard someone say “…many people think over-training means that your training too much. Most of the time you aren’t. For most people, over-training comes in the form of poor nutrition, poor hydration, lack of sleep, and lack of recovery.” I may have slightly messed that up, but the message is very clear. I feel like for the first time ever I can say I have directly felt the differences between good recovery and poor recovery.

My previous normal recovery schedule consisted of a little bit of alcohol each week, an average of about 7 hours a night of sleep, decent minimal recovery methods, and iffy hydration and nutrition. It kinda seemed like I did well enough of all of these for a normal amount of exercise, but I could tell it was not nearly enough overall recovery.

Adjustments I’ve made:

1. I now carry a gallon jug of water throughout the day with the daytime/water levels on it.

2. Aim for 8–9 hours of sleep a night. Epsom Salt bath once a week (on training day)

3. Jacuzzi/Hot tub once a week (on training day)

4. Stretch and Roll out before bed every night, no exceptions.

5. Go to the recovery center for compression, sauna, and cold plunge (on my weekly off day)

Outside of recovery practices, I’ve had to put a much larger focus on mobility on a regular basis rather than doing the occasional hour-long yoga session. For me, 45 min a day of some targeted myfascial release paired with stretching has helped minimize my problems. With that being said, I would say I am much more injury prone due to my previous training habits. A combination of improper lifting blocks, incorrect run form for almost my whole life, and a regular lack of recovery have brought me to some pretty uncomfortable and annoying problems to deal with.

This Leadville100 journey will be such a large task for me. My goal during this process is to continue to learn best practices for myself and to fix some of my problems along the way. Will it be easy? Most things of great value aren’t easy, but so worth it in the end.

More updates soon. I'm excited to share my journey with you all!

- Andrew