Early this week we got an email from Coach saying,
Hello all you phenomenal triathletes (nice way to start an email, yes? :-))
Here we are in week four already. More importantly this is your first recovery week. While our training volume is still relatively small (uh-oh), it is very important to scale back a bit to give your body a chance to heal and recover from everything that you have put it through. If you are having any nagging physical issues, be sure to take extra time off to heal. Your body does not get stronger from simply beating it into the ground. Reality is actually quite to the contrary. When you exercise, your muscles are subjected to stress that actually damages the tissue. It is only during recovery that the muscle can rebuild itself stronger so that next time it is better able to handle the stress you put it under. In other words you get stronger and more resistant to injury.
Stick to the training schedule that I have laid out and don’t be tempted to push harder or do more. (oh, don’t worry about that, coach! haha!)
At first I was so excited. It sounded almost like a “rest” week! What is recovery week! Yay!
Then I took a look at our OYO swim workout for yesterday. It was a total of 1900 yards (76 lengths) – 600 more than last week. THIS Is recovery? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I said to Lily, “Are you SURE you want to do Fitness level again?” She replied, of course we can do this.
And as it turned out, we could. But I still am unclear on the concept of what “Recovery Week” means. It makes me afraid for NEXT week!
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