Training vs. Recovery

Next in my bi-weekly series on conversations with older athletes. First, though, a disclaimer. While these are all based on actual people, I have in some cases changed details or incorporated facts from encounters with other people, choosing to conflate stories for either dramatic effect or to further elucidate whatever obscure point I might be trying to make.

My wife hates it when I do that. She’s a stickler for accuracy. Like the time I claimed in one of my posts that she took our kids out trick or treating in her neighborhood and visited Harrison Ford’s house.

“Al, that wasn’t Harrison Ford’s house; it was Donald Sutherland’s. He’s the one who lived up the street from my parents when Cody was 1.”

“But didn’t you go once to Harrison Ford’s house?”

“Yes, but that wasn’t on Halloween, it was on Thanksgiving. And it wasn’t with the kids, it was with Craig [my brother-in-law]. And Harrison Ford wasn’t even there; Craig’s friend was house sitting. That’s how we got in.”

“But the blog was all about – the key, central point was that Sean Connery said to Indiana Jones [H. Ford], ‘Indy. let it go!’ That was the whole POINT. I had to change it to make it all tie together, you now, what with you having to leave your parents’ home for the last time, and some things we remembered, and just have to ‘Let it go’ and what that had to do with racing, and, and …. It just wouldn’t WORK with Donald Sutherland!”

“I know, and I appreciate it; it really is very well done. But can you go back and change it? Just for me? I wouldn’t want my friends to think the wrong thing.”

She made me promise to change it (which I never did), so maybe she can consider this an apology. And, remember, folks, it’s not like I’m doing legitimate journalism here – I’m telling stories and trying to get some emotions and ideas across. Truth and reality have to take second place to that endeavor.

That said, everything you are about to read (or for that matter have read here) is true, and actually happened; only the words have been changed to make it all sound better.

……….

I started talking with Doug H. at the last two races I’ve done. He’s 55, and a legend of speed in our parts. I mean, I’ve qualified for the ITU world’s in both sprint and Oly, and he’s 6 and 14 minutes faster than I am, respectively. Luckily, we’ll never be in the same age group, so we can safely talk training and racing strategy without having to strain our comments through the veil of competition.

He’s got decades of endurance base training behind him, and consequently a body devoid of any visible fat molecules. When he races, his face contorts into a grim death mask of agony – from the time he gets out of the water, he looks like he is about to keel over from the intensity of his effort.

I asked him why he works so hard in races, and he gave two reasons, “I don’t want my daughter to catch me. And I don’t train enough to make it easy.”

He has three daughters, and his youngest is quickly catching up to him, meaning she can beat me by about a minute or two on those shorter races, without doing any real training at all.

But it was his training schedule that got me. “I do about one hour a day of cardio work” – meaning swimming, biking, or running – “maybe 60 miles of biking, 8 miles of running [don’t know if I really believe this], and a couple of mornings in the pool.”

“You used to do more?’

“Oh, sure, but I kept getting injured. I think I need more time to recover after workouts now, than I did 15-20 years ago. And if I do more, anyway, I start to break down. My feet hurt, my knees hurt … you know. I like this; I want to keep going to the World’s every year. So most of my really hard work is right here at a race. The rest of the time, I’m just putting in the miles, and some strides each week to keep the speed in my legs.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, I’ve started two weight sessions a week” – remember, the guy looks like a classic pencil-necked geek – “I think we need that now, for strength and balance.”

Recovery, so important for any endurance athlete, is paramount at our age. As a surgeon, I have been observing recovery from physician-inflicted trauma for nearly 40 years. What takes a 17 y/o a week to heal from, might take a 70 y/o 2+ months. One of my little theories of life is that we are in a constant state of repair and recovery, and death becomes inevitable when the pace of breakdown starts to exceed the pace and ability of the body to repair. That might be the rate-limiter for my athletic career – when I need so much time to recover, that I can’t train anymore.