Deciding to complete an Ironman Triathlon (well, two, Puerto Rico’s 70.3 and Ironman Tulsa 140.3) means that I need to step up my fitness game and, perhaps even more importantly, my nutrition and recovery game.
Triathlons are a 4-sport event: swim, bike, run and eat. But there are two other key ingredients to a successful training season: mental endurance AND effective recovery. Recovery is both about injury-prevention and about maximizing your ability to adapt to the training in a positive way.
When I completed Muncie’s 70.3 Ironman in 2015, I did the race while injured. Not even a month before I tore my hip labrum. I’ve always had a “tighter” side (in my case, my left side), and a combination of thinking that my body was invincible and the heavy training load finally did me in. I went to the orthopedic doctor and tried hard not to lose it while listening to him tell me that I shouldn’t cycle while I healed (not a chance, with my triathlon event a month away!). I finally convinced him that I would take it easy, and I did. I adjusted my brain from “I need to complete this Ironman triathlon in this amount of time” to “I’m going to enjoy the fact that I’m doing it and, as often as possible, take the opportunity to be grateful, to look up and to appreciate my surroundings”. Instead of feeling bad or less-than when passed by people, I focused on appreciating their fitness and mentally wished them a good race.
I will always remember, while cycling and keeping tabs on my injury to make sure I didn’t take it to the point of flare up, I looked up and saw a paddock. A beautiful black horse was trotting inside it. No harness, no hurry, just gently trotting around for the fun of it. For a few seconds, the horse ran parallel to me and I just stared, in wonder and gratefulness, at the beautiful moment sandwiched in the stress, pain, labor and endurance of an Ironman event. It felt like in the movies, where time slows down, sounds fade away and you’re just in the moment.
I had a great bike course in the event, and then moved to the worst part – the run. At that point my injury was tight but manageable and it was more of an exercise of mental endurance to run past the finish line into the arms of my family. My oldest son, Lucas, actually kept me from collapsing. I gave everything I had to that race and when I saw his face, every mile, every second, every hurt, every tired bone and aching feet, was worth it. After all, completing an Ironman is not about completing the individual events for me, it’s about pushing yourself to be more, to do more, to blow past your perceived limits or the things you “just can’t do”. It’s about demonstrating to my kids that they too can reach for seemingly impossible goals and work hard to achieve them. That they too can push back the walls of our perceived limitations to find a wide expanse of opportunity and strength.
This time around I’m a few years older and the injury still remains. I don’t dismiss it like I unwisely did a few years before. I honor it, respect it, gently challenge it but also support it and accept it. I have done a lot of research into how to recover from training, to support your body as it adjusts to pressure and to give it what it needs, and more, to help it accommodate the load, to grow without breaking. Here are the tools I use, both internally and externally, to keep my injury from flaring or new injuries from appearing. It’s imposible to injury-proof your body, but it is possible to bolster its chances for adaptation and growth.
1. Antioxidant drinks for tissue repair, hydration and recovery.
After much research into natural sources of antioxidants I found that dandelion tea is one of the most antioxidant-heavy source among herbal teas. I drink my dandelion tea alongside chamomile and peppermint leaves. I found all of the loose leaves in a Herbiary store in Asheville, but they are also found pretty widely and in Amazon.
2. Hibiscus tea for another antioxidant boost
Hibiscus flowers are renowned for their antioxidant value and nutritional prowess. Dr. Greger, of NutritionFacts.org, has a great recipe. I simple place the flowers in a reusable tea bag, fill a large pitcher with water and place the tea bag in it overnight. I don’t use any sweetener on it, but you could sweeten it a little to make it even more delicious.
3. Foam rolling works, even if it sucks
Nothing evokes weird sounds from me like foam rolling, but it has been proven to be effective in flushing out lactic acid from tired muscles and working through any adhesions that may inhibit healing and recovery of tired muscles. I have an alarm every day before bed that reminds me to do it. By the way, foam rolling has gotten easier for me over time. I have both a small and a large foam roller and much prefer the larger one for maximum coverage.
4. Compression socks to help the blood flow to the legs
I put on my very un-sexy compression socks after a hard or long run and let the tight fabric work its magic to increase the flow of blood to my tissues. More blood flow = faster recovery.
5. Get those legs flowing and pumpin!
You’ve read me mention blood flow a few times in this post and that’s because blood flow aids in recovery, tissue regeneration, healing and thus adaptation. The way fitness/muscle gains work is that we tear up the tissues while working out and they stronger after the tissue recovers. After a hard workout I recommend two things: walk it out and put it up. I take my dogs out for a slow walk after a hard workout to get my muscles to contract and return blood flow to the heart for the heart to process the blood and help flush my legs. Since we don’t have a second heart in the bottom of our bodies, walking causes the muscles to pump blood back to the heart and thus help the overall process of regeneration happen more effectively. Legs up the wall works in a similar manner. You shimmy yourself until your behind is touching or close to touching the wall, while laying down on your back. You then put your legs up the wall and then Instagram on your phone. This helps flush your legs as well. I prefer the walking method, because I feel it both cools me down faster and gets my blood flow moving but I still do legs up the wall to maximize the effect.
6. Warm up and Warm Down!
Yes, I said warm down – that’s the new term for cooling down. When I was training for my first 70.3 triathlon, I am embarrassed to say I didn’t either warm up or cool down. Now? I’ve noticed that if I don’t properly warm up, I feel like a clock whose springs and buttons have come off and it doesn’t quite work together. My body needs to warm up for 5-10 minutes beforehand and I need to warm up my entire body, even if I’m just using my legs. My best workouts have happened after I have taken the time to properly warm up. I feel like I don’t require as much time to get into the groove, as opposed to hobbling painfully with my hip flexors screaming or my calves cramping or my back feeling tight from sitting in front of my computer all day.
After working out, warming down is incredibly important, too. My preferred method is to walk my dogs for 20-30 minutes so I can get my heart rate down and start pumping the used up blood back to the heart. After I get back, I usually do a few stretches to get my mobility back. It’s interesting how working out works, when I start out, I’m all stiff like Frankenstein and after I warm up I’m all “stinging like a bee, dance like a butterfly” and then back to Frankenstein after the workout is done. Warming down gets me back to somewhere in the middle of both of those.
7. After workout food
Much has been written about the 20-30 minute timeframe after working out where the body is primed to receive nutrition used for healing and recovery. This is the easiest one to cover, since it involves eating and drinking! Since I like to shower immediately after I exercise and, get chills if I don’t, I usually will grab a protein drink (Apres is my current favorite!) and then sip as I shower. After that, I take more time to make a green smoothie (with kale, protein powder, frozen berries, frozen banana, maca, chorella, flax seeds, hemp seeds and chia seeds).
8. Cold shower or ice bath
I have some colleagues who swear by cold showers and the benefits on alertness, hair, skin and general feeling of well-being. I am a new, and slightly cowardly, addition to the cold shower group. I use this one sparingly but try to do it a few times per week. My approach is to take a regular shower, but decrease the water temp over time and lower it to the lowest level I can take for the last 1-3 mins and slowly turn around to make sure the cold water is reaching all my body, but specifically my legs. Ice baths (or cold baths) are another method used for muscle recovery. I have not yet leveraged this (read: cowardly) but it’s in my list of things to try. You can either set up a few inches of the coldest water you have or fill it with cold water and then throw in some ice and soak your tired muscles in it.
That’s it, some ideas to treat your body right after you exercise it so that it can provide the improvements you want. Getting faster and stronger is not only about the miles you run or the weights you lift, but also what you do with your body before and afterwards, how you nourish it and treat it right. If you don’t, it will eventually break somewhere- I know this firsthand.
Te amo!