This year my recovery from Ironman is moving at a rapid pace. At my first Ironman (NZ), it took me 6 weeks to fully recover. Last year at IM Austria, it took me 4 weeks. And this time, I think it will be less than 4 weeks. On Friday, I went for a swim and only did 1600m, but I was able to swim with no aerobic problems. Only when I tried to do a fast set that I felt my body jump to LT only after the 3rd 50m of a 6×50 fast set. It was then I just decided to get out of the pool.
Yesterday the same thing happened on the bike. I went out for an hour ride on Foothill Expressway which is flat, gentle rolling terrain. While on that flat terrain, I didn’t feel any discomfort at all. Maybe my HR was a tiny bit higher than normal, but I felt pretty good. It was only when I tried to accelerate up a small hill when I jumped straight to LT and I felt like I was exerting much more than normal.
I want to change my recovery from previous years where I went international and basically did nothing for a full week afterwards. I recovered, but the inactivity made it really hard to get back into the activity after such a long layoff. So now I want to try keeping sessions short, but testing where the boundary is between my effort level and when I hit LT. I won’t push it too hard, but I want to keep my body stimulated so that it doesn’t fall into that area where I can’t really pick it up easiliy. I’ve got a longer season this year with IM WA at the end of the year and need to keep focus for many months after now. In previous years, it’s been really tough to rally after my single Ironman and I need to change that.