How to Recover from an Ultra Cycling or Running Event

Endurance athletes do not typically support rest easily, but it can take some time to recover from an ultra event. So here is a protocol that might help:

Rest

The most important thing to do after your event is to rest. Depending on your mindset, how hard you went and how happy you are with your ultra you may not be very motivated to train. Regardless of your motivation you need to take some time off to allow yourself to recover physically and mentally.

You will need to take enough time away from your sport to allow any trauma (abrasions, saddle sores, niggles, blisters) to heal and for any muscle soreness (DOMS) to pass. 

Depending on your event you may need to recover from sleep loss, some calorific deficit and dehydration.

A good rule of thumb is to rest until you can perform normal day to day activities without unusual fatigue and your motivation to do something has returned. 

Test

Once you have rested sufficiently you can then test. A test is a short very easy outing to test how things feel.

Short - 30 minutes is sufficient (20 minutes for running)

Easy - turning the legs over only; it should feel pretty effortless and you should be able to chat as you ride/run.

During your test outing you can decide whether this feels normal. If there are some unusual niggles, residual soreness, you feel unusually breathless or tired then go back to rest.

After the test you can monitor how you feel over the next 24 hours. If you feel unusually fatigued, some unusual aches and pains arise go back to resting.

Easy

Once you have done a test outing and you have responded normally both during and after you can try a few short, easy sessions. 

Short - 45 minutes to an hour on the bike, 30 to 45 minutes running.

Easy - as in the previous step, turning the legs over. For now it can be useful not to worry too much about your usual training zones and just stick to going at an intensity where you can still chat as you ride/run. You are really still recovering so things won't be completely normal.

You might want to start with just two or three easy sessions in a 7 day period, or if you feel ok you might want to try a few more. Play it by how you feel and what was normal for you prior to your event; so if you only ever trained 3 times per week, then you don't need to do more than 3 easy sessions per week in this phase.

If you feel unusually tired or you have unusual soreness, and niggles go back to resting and testing.

Endurance

After about a week of Easy with no ill effects you may be ready for some endurance sessions. 

You can start with some short endurance  (1 hour to 90 minutes cycling, 45 minutes to an hour running) in your endurance zone. If you use training zones this equates to zones 1-2 depending on which system you use. If you don't just go at your normal endurance intensity (usually an intensity at which you can hold a conversation and/or breath through your nose as you go).

During the endurance workouts you can monitor how you feel - does zone 2 feel unusually hard? Is your heart rate unusually high for the pace/power? Are you unusually out of breath? If this is the case go back to the easy stage for a few more days.

Afterwards you can check how your body responds to the endurance work; if you feel unusual fatigue then you likely need more time in the Easy stage.

If everything seems normal and you are responding normally you could usefully do a week or two in this stage, progressing to some longer endurance once per week (not ultra long but starting to build in to your usual long training sessions in length).

Intensity

Once you are confident that your body can support endurance and you can do a base level of training (normal for you) you can try some intensity.

Some people like to try this by just 'pushing a bit' on an endurance session as they feel and seeing what happens. Others like to do some ramp ups like the example below to 'test things out.'

As with each stage, if your body behaves unusually, the effort seems high for a given pace/power or your heart rate is behaving unusually this is a sign you are not ready for intensity and you need to spend more time in the endurance stage.

I usually start with something just above endurance and gradually increase more intensity over a few weeks; some athletes will naturally do this as they use that endurance work out to push harder and harder as they feel, others prefer a more structured approach going gradually from zone 3 to zones 4 and 5 over a 2 to 3 week period.

Normal Training

Normal training can resume once you have gone through all the stages and are maintaining your base amount of volume and intensity with no unusual fatigue or ill effects.

Recovery is not linear

Just as fitness building isn't linear, neither is recovery; it's important to listen to your body and respond by going back to an earlier stage if you need to. This is a normal part of the recovery process.