Recovery Week Doesn’t Have To Be All Week: Training Log

Change up your easy week. You can get extra out of your training by taking a different approach. Your recovery week doesn’t have to be all week.

I took 4 days for recovery from the Coburg Half Marathon. Usually 3 days is enough, but since the Hard Core 100 Mile I’m finding harder runs impact recovery more.

My week looked like this:

• recovery work⠀

• Regeneration 50min⠀

• recovery work ⠀

• day off⠀

• Long Run 2 hours ⠀

• Regeneration 50min⠀

• Easy 55min⠀

⠀

Total: 43km/week

The Normal

Many training programs go with the cycle of 2-3 weeks hard training followed by a full easy week. Often the easy week is a reduction in distance of all the same key sessions.

For example the long run is cut back to 50%, instead of 6x1000m intervals you perform 4x800m. It works for many. There are different approaches.

My favourite is to focus completely on recovery then launch back into full training when the body is ready.

Redefine Your Structure 

Get out of thinking your training week always starts on Monday. Instead your training week begins when your body is ready.

Then you are free to focus on taking the recovery you need. Better than being forced into a predetermined calendar. Yes the body is fairly predictable, but it doesn’t always go as planned.

This week I expected to be ready with 3 days of recovery. It wasn’t the case. So I took an extra day. Training started on Thursday.

The Rest Of Life

We are all constrained by the rest of our commitments. Most runners go long on the weekend because that’s when they have the time available.

Flick your thinking around. Your week doesn’t have to end with the long run. Maybe the long run can now be in the middle. You can approach the run a bit differently.

Your week doesn’t have to be confined to the normal 7 days. Maybe you take 4 days of recovery followed by a week that lasts for 10 days. This brings you back to aligning the next week to Monday. 

What can you do with a 10 day week?

Change up your training structure. Maybe taking an extra easy day between your hard sessions. Will it allow you to get more out of those hard runs? Perhaps you can throw in a different type of hard run into the mix. 

How do you structure your recovery week from training and racing?