Program Building: Balancing Stress and Recovery

2012 Iron Horse Half Marathon
Recovery isn't always pretty...

Building a training program is about balancing stress and recovery. Allow me to over-simplify for a second here. You ask your body to do something that's hard... much harder than it's used to doing. Something like running a mile or lifting a heavy iron bar with weights on the ends. Once that task is over, the second it is over, in fact, your body starts a conversation with itself. "That was hard. We might have to do that again. We better divert resources to making those muscles and blood vessels bigger and stronger and more up to the challenge."

And that right there is the whole of exercise physiology in a nutshell. Everything else is details. But here's the tricky part. Your body needs the right amount of work to trigger that process, and the right amount of recovery time to allow it to happen. Too little time between workouts, and you never get the chance to rebuild what exercise tears down. Eventually you reach a state called "over-training" where you are actually getting weaker as your body fails to keep up.

So what is the right amount of work for you? Depends on your current condition and your future goals. Right now, I'm trying to run about 25 miles a week. Pretty modest by some runner's standards, but consistent with who I am, what I can do, and why I'm doing it.

And what is the right amount of rest? For me, it's every other day. I run both days on the weekend sometimes, but I don't make a habit of it. Other runners can be out 5 or 6 days a week. I'm not one of them. I start to get tired, I slow down. I don't stop hurting, and worst of all: I stop enjoying my runs. And remember, running is a keystone of my mental health. It's pretty important that I not hate doing it.

Right now, I'm not training for any particular distance. I want to be ready to run any 5K or 10K that comes along, and I have a half and a full Marathon in mind for the fall, but this month, I'm in maintenance mode. To allow for the every-other-day pattern I prefer, I write my own programs on a 14 day cycle that looks like this.

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Week 1	XT	5 miles	XT	5 miles	XT	5 miles	Rest
Week 2	13 miles	XT	5 miles	XT	5 miles	Rest	13 miles

XT means Cross-training. Those are the days I swim or ride my bike or walk. I also use those days for strength training. The point is, I don't use the same muscle systems in the same way two days in a row. Recovery happens on a microscopic level. That's why you can run on Monday and walk on Tuesday. You are not challenging the same muscles in the same way. 

I think of the weekday runs as "Purpose" runs. They always have a purpose and there are lots of possibilities. Recovery runs are light and easy, a great way to wring out the joints after a race. Tempo runs help you to learn your ideal speed and to know it by feel. Speed runs are designed to make you stronger and faster. Hill runs... well, they are just what they sound like. Awful. And beautiful. As in, "It feels so good when I stop."

The long runs on the weekend have a purpose too, but it's always the same: to build endurance. The short runs train your legs. The long ones train your will.

When I'm training for a long race, I stretch the distance on one of the long runs and shorten up the other. I've found through experience that I can add about 2 miles every 2 weeks to my long run. When I start training for my next marathon, I'll take that Saturday run out to 15 miles, and drop the next Sunday one down to 8 or 10. The week after that, I should be able to go 17 on Saturday. The following weekend, I'll run 10 or 12. A really long run requires more recovery time. That's why I won't try to run 20 miles two weekends in a row or to run 28 miles the week before a marathon. 

There's a lot of art and science involved in building a program, and I am not going to pretend to understand more than a sliver of it, but this is the way I train myself. Serious runners might scoff at these tiny numbers. Newcomers might despair at them. To the former I say, "Screw You! Don't you people know I'm a natural wonder?" To the latter I say, "Don't compare yourself to anybody. I once thought that a 5K was an unimaginable distance to run. I got to this place one step at a time, and so will you."

Find your own rhythm of stress and recovery. Your legs will tell you when it's time to test yourself, and your heart will tell you when you're ready for the test. Other runners will offer advice, some good, some not. Some authors will speak to your soul and others will talk right over your head. Your job is to listen and learn. And to keep running.

Sleep well. Eat clean. Lift Heavy. Run Hard.

Peace,

Bob