Recovery

As Vasaloppet went fine, I thought I take a few days off and I would recover quickly and be in amazing form. Strava is saying I am in the form of my life, although fatigue factor is quite high. It has not been so straightforward.

I rested completely while travelling for two full days. I arrived back in Texas, and on the third day, I thought I do a slow 5k jog to start up again. It was slow, really slow, but my body told me it was racing speed. Afterwards, my legs were dead. It was worrying and I thought I may be getting sick.

I rested another day and agreed to do a slow bike ride with my friends. It was slow, too slow, how slow can it be? I took off with a faster group and I felt fine. Great! I am back, I am recovered!

Not so fast. After resting one day again (just to be careful) I decided on a bike and run brick repeat, 5km bike and 1 mile hill run, 3 times over. I have done this exercise several times before, and I quite enjoy it. It is hard, but the constant transitions give a bit of respite in between max efforts. This time, it felt hard right away. I tried to push through, but the clock did not lie, I was very slow. And every repeat slower than the previous. A very heavy guy on a bike casually breezed by me while I was trying to sprint. Afterwards I had a headache, my legs were exhausted, and the tired feeling lasted into the next day!

One more day of rest, and then I went for 1 hour speed ride with my friends. I was worried I would not be able to keep up, but I really did not have any problems. After the ride, I decided to run my 1mile hill track, just to see if I could do a good time. I did a new PR, a full minute faster than my worst time only two days earlier.

I am not sure what is going on, but I think it has to do with the recovery. I am guessing I depleted my energy stores on the 90 km cross country ski race, and that my body have limited energy available to work with. I am now paying more attention to my food and made a few meals very carbohydrate rich. We will see how it goes.