As my first main race of the year is approaching very quickly, being only just over 3 weeks away, I am now at a stage where I'm getting some rather tough sessions in, trying to replicate parts of my race in training. A session I did this week, a 90 minute bike ride followed by a 45 minute run, is a session I have done many times before, even before stepping up the distance. It is a session where I know exactly how I should be feeling, yet this time was different! I didn't just do this session well, I smashed it! And I felt good afterwards and my body seems to have recovered rather nicely. This post is mainly about analysing how I got to this level of energy and performance. After explaining about how I got there, I give a small list at the end on how you can do it as well.
As anyone who has ever done sports knows, one of the main issues that arise is either a lack of energy during your training/race, or feeling completely drained afterwards. It is not fun to be halfway through the session, only to feel like collapsing in a heap, or at least stopping for a nice meal. Worse still, at least for me, is a feeling of exhaustion an hour or so after finishing an intense or long training session or race. Since September 2013, I have sought an answer to this problem. I have been satisfied with a lot of the progress I have seen so far, but only this week that I have decided that I was not just satisfied with the adjustments I've made; I am delighted!
If you have been following my blog over the past few months, you might have noticed that I have written more about nutrition and blood tests than writing about the actual training or the gear I'm using. The simple explanation for this is that, especially as I stepped up my target distance to Half Ironman, I knew that upping the training volume alone wouldn't cut it on its own. I have been fine with sorting out my training and avoiding injury for a couple of years now, so I am very comfortable with this, and it has become second nature to me. The missing parts for me were the nutrition and I also wanted to make sure I wasn't harming my body, hence the blood tests.
Like I have explained in previous posts, once I have increased my training volume late last year, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing harm to myself. Training 30-35 hours per week was by no stretch of the imagination a "normal" training week, and I couldn't just do it without some help from science. This is when I got in touch with Dr Tamsin Lewis (aka Sportie Doc) and used her services via her CuroSeven clinic, and I have explained before about the blood tests, etc. so I won't bore you again with the details, as they're already in some other posts on my blog.
Following the new regimen of supplements, adjusting my nutrition and making a few tweaks to my training, I started to feel a difference over time. My training race earlier in March, which was a sprint, didn't really show me much of these physical improvements, as it was too short, and I used it more to focus on other aspects such as gear and technique. Also, in the run up to that sprint race, I have significantly reduced the volume of my training and focused more on some speed work, so I didn't really have a proper gauge to see whether the changes I have made did actually affect my stamina and recovery.
So, from mid March until now, a month later, I have increased the volume again, while still maintaining intensity in my sessions, and the results are just phenomenal, beyond anything I would have dreamed of! First, my recovery is just amazing! I cannot believe how quickly my body recovers now from very demanding sessions, which in the past would have resulted in me not being able to walk for days afterwards. Of course the proper training I have put in helped a lot, but I also know my body well enough to know what contributed to this improvement. Moreover, as the recovery doesn't take as long, my following sessions are started feeling more fresh and stronger than before, which also resulted in a noticeable improvement in strength and speed over a much shorter period than anticipated. Finally, feeling strong and not tired is something I am just amazed with. For such a long time now, maybe since I have started training for triathlons again in late 2011, I have just been feeling very tired (and moody) most of the time, yet now, even with the ridiculous volume of training I am doing, I am feeling super!
So, what is the secret? Well, I contribute this to the more scientific approach I have taken over the past few months. Creating a training schedule according to the goal distances/speed while ignoring some other crucial aspects was a very unwise approach. These other aspects include both qualitative and quantitative questions that should be answered regularly. Listening to the body, for example, is one area that is really important to get right. Knowing when one should stop because of a sign that an injury might occur or if one is just being lazy is really important. It is very easy to get dragged to either extremes, one being pushing too hard and getting injured, and the other making excuses and not getting anything done.
A quantitative issue that needs to be addressed is what does one's blood say about what they should do. Getting a proper blood screening done and analysed by a sports specialist is of paramount importance, as I found out myself. Having a normal blood screening looked at by a conventional doctor is different. What the GP might consider the "normal" range might not necessarily be the same if you are doing sports, especially when the volume is high, such as in my case. Not only that, but one invaluable benefit I have found from having CuroSeven look at my results was their telling me what could have been the causes for such variances from the optimal ranges, and recommendations on how to improve these through adjustments in nutrition, certain changes in training, and the use of supplements in some cases.
While the qualitative aspects take a long time to get used to, the nutrition and blood screening are much more straight forward, and I believe that I cannot talk highly enough about their benefits. So, if I take getting the right shoes out of the equation, I would even go on to say that, the improvements I have seen in myself over the past 4 months (since I started this approach) have outweighed most of any other improvements I have gone through over the past 3 years, and it was mostly thanks to understanding my blood and taking care of my nutrition!
Now, for the important part: what should you do in order to be healthy and feel more energetic?
1. Do NOT just take any supplements because they look good, they were recommended to you by friends, or because some athlete you know uses them. Each person is different, and you should only take supplements that your body actually needs. You can be doing yourself more harm than good if you just take these supplements without properly knowing what they are for. Supplements include vitamins (and multivitamins), protein shakes, fish oil, etc. Anything that you don't get through your normal food and drink, basically.
2. Do NOT consume sports drinks without understanding how much and when you should use them! Again, you can be doing yourself more harm than good by taking in all these colourful drinks. Just because a pro athlete has been photographed taking these drinks doesn't mean that you'll suddenly find your inner super hero by copying this. Sports drinks have very specific functions, and, again, you need to understand if you should ever consume them, when you should do so and how much of it.
3. Do NOT follow conventional diets if you want to be healthy! Any diet that cuts out one or more of the main macronutrients, such as low fat or low carb diets, should not be used over extended periods of time, if ever! These might be quick fix approaches to losing weight, but they are not healthy for your body. Each person's lifestyle and physiological demands differ from others', and what needs to be eaten and how much of it are as important as when the food should be eaten as well. You need to find a more long-term solution to your nutrition, and this starts with understanding how things that go into your body work, so you can decide on when and what to eat and drink.
4. If you can, try to avoid just following template training programmes, like the ones in magazines or online. You can start with some of those, such as "couch to 5k" if you want to start moving and your goal is to run 5 kilometres non-stop, or, if your goal is just to maintain your current level of fitness and don't want to participate in any races or events, you can also just keep doing the same training you have been used to, although you need to get some professional feedback from time to time. Training can affect the way your body produces certain hormones, or how it uses certain vitamins and minerals. So, even if you don't get a coach to structure your training, you need to get a coach to look at your blood results to see how you can make some adjustments to help you improve your overall health, and not just performance.
5. Get a proper blood screening done! What will be found in there will affect how you eat, how you train, and any supplements you should be taking or avoiding. If you do not do sports, this could make a big difference in your health, since it can show what things you need to do or avoid doing (other than doing sports, of course). If you do sports and want to improve, or even if you want to just stay where you are, you'll want to know how to avoid losing energy and, even better, how to have much higher energy levels.
As always, I would love to hear from you about this subject, so please share with me your thoughts, comments, or questions. If you don't want to share them publicly, you can always drop me an email, of course!
Thanks for reading!
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