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Body Repair and Recovery Dring the 4th Season
Unless you are racing in the Southern Hemisphere, the triathlon season is winding down by the end of October. Time to take some down-time, some lay-on –the-couch-and-watch-football time. Should feel great! But, just like during your race taper, you may be a little jittery, maybe a little on edge, maybe some aches and pains that you don’t have when you are training nearly every day. What is that? Regular aerobic activity accustoms your body to, even addicts it to, the endorphin release that occurs. So, if you stop getting that regular endorphin infusion, your body misses it and complains.
If you give endorphins regularly to monkeys, they exhibit drug-seeking behaviors similar to those seen with cocaine or narcotics. So no wonder if we stop working out 6-7 days per week, initially we don’t feel good. We are going through a form of drug withdrawal. This isn’t as bad as the famous scenes with Gene Hackman in the movie “The French Connection”, but endorphin withdrawal still takes a week or so. OK… So what if you what if you just carry on your competition training plan year round? Then you won’t have the endorphin withdrawal. Sound like a good idea to you, huh?
Many athletes have tried it. The survivors (the famous and the not so famous) may still be struggling with the consequences and injuries years later. Some are still involved with triathlon, many are not. But they push the limits once too often without stopping to rest and suffer permanent damage to their bodies from which they sometimes never, ever recover. Just ask Greg Welsh, Bill Rogers, or Alberto Salazar. At least two of these three athletes developed what has come to be called FAMS (Fatigued Athletes Myopathic Syndrome.) They will likely not recover in this lifetime. Welsh in fact damaged his heart so badly that he has a pacemaker.
The downsides of competition:
When we are in great form and begin to build toward competitive sharpness, it feels great! (We freely admit to many days in the last ten years when peaking for major races that we felt better than we could ever remember feeling as adults.) The problem is that competition, especially at the ½ IM distance and beyond, can do some serious body damage. All of us have a somewhat variable, but finite, capacity for long competitions and the training it takes to really race them. (Noakes, et al. 1987) The consensus is that an endurance athlete lasts about 20 yrs if they incorporate regular rest, periodize their training, but race regularly every year. But, there is a very real limit, for if we cross over the FAMS line, that’s it! Our racing careers are over. Fortunately, except for those who are professional athletes, we can still make a living. So learning about the science may help all of us control our training and racing urges and obsessions so that as Jimmy Buffet says, we may “be the last man (or woman) standing” on the starting line many years from now.
Training Limits and More Real Reasons Why You Should Rest:
One of the pre-eminent scientists studying endurance athletes is Timothy Noakes, MD, DSc. Dr. Noakes is, first of all, a scientist interested in endurance athletics. He has combined this with his clinical interest in athletes and been intensively involved with sport science as Director of the Sports Science Institute of South Africa since 1992. His book, The Lore of Running, is an understandable compendium of the history and science of endurance athletic sport training and racing. It’s not a quick read at 930 pages long, and that is without the 100 pages of references that are available online from Human Kinetics, the publisher (see below.) But, it’s all there folks, to help you separate myth from reality in our sport. Trust us, there is plenty of myth. Noake’s description of the history of the development of modern periodized endurance training practice and theory is worth the price.
The other source for real learning about endurance training is Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training. The author, Tudor Bompa, Ph.D., is the mastermind behind the USSR and Eastern European sport domination that lasted for three decades. He is the father of periodized training in the Western world, and published extensively after he immigrated to North America from Romania. He was an Olympic athlete and has trained 11 medalists in Olympic and World Championships over the years & over 20 national champions. He is one of the only coaches in the world to have trained Olympic gold medalists in more than one sport. If you buy the book, be sure to get a copy that was translated into English (note that it is available in 18 languages.)
Let’s review a little science as it relates to training and racing triathlon, and especially in relation to the need for rest. FAMS is the worst problem since you probably never ever recover. The executive summary is that longer races and the training sessions (longer than about 21 km, ½ marathon, or ½ IM) cause muscle damage. Those folks who get glycogen-depleted while training and racing seem to have more muscle damage to more of their muscle cells than those who have mastered their nutritional needs. (Derman, et al.1997.) With ADEQUATE rest, most of the muscle cells used in racing heal, but some don’t and the cells that die cause the scar tissue that is seen in the muscles of veteran endurance athletes. Thus, endurance athletes usually last no more than 20+ years. After that, in most cases, the cumulative damage, especially in runners and cyclists, is enough that they seem to fade away and drop out, or at least far back in the pack. So if you see a Masters’ level athlete turning in truly exceptional performances, they are unlikely to have been highly successful competitors in college. However, there are always the “mutants,” or true counterexamples, but they are few in number.
If you really go over the line with training and racing, then the mitochondria in many of your muscle cells in your legs are damaged permanently and remain abnormal. (Mitochondria are the energy generators in your cells.) You can’t run or bike fast anymore, and more than about 30 minutes of running or cycling vigorously leaves you exhausted. You then have muscle discomfort that may last a week afterward. That’s it, you’ve got FAMS and you’re done as an endurance athlete. Note that these folks still have normal muscle mitochondria in the muscles they didn’t use in their endurance sport.
Other relevant science to the question of periodic rest and prolonging your athletic career includes the following executive summaries of what, in most cases, is solid reproducible scientific research. These other types of problems usually resolve with rest, but sometimes it must be prolonged:
- Part of the problem with ultra distance racing and training is that intensive ultra endurance activity without rest eventually exhausts the hypothalamus in the brain so that it fails to appropriately control the secretion of hormones such as cortisol, thyroid, and testosterone. If you stop soon enough you may recover (Barron, et al, 1995.) The subjects in this study were just over-trained and actually recovered with six weeks absolute rest.
(the low testosterone level is one reason why overtrained male athletes have a very low libido)
- If you test ultra-marathoners and IM athletes after a race, they have both chemical markers in their blood and muscle biopsies demonstrating skeletal and cardiac muscle injury. Some racers, after doing the equivalent of an IM triathlon or ultra-marathon, still showed the muscle damage being repaired 8-10 weeks after a race (Warhol, et al, 1985.) Almost all training regimens recommend returning to training after IM distance triathlons and other ultra-distance events before muscle damage has completely healed (“rest one day for each hour you have raced.”) This inadequate rest after racing has unknown, but surely harmful, long term effects on your muscles.
- Muscle soreness after training or racing is a symptom of damaged muscles. The more sore you are, the greater the muscle damage. Scientists developed standards about a quarter century ago that have generally failed to filter through to the world of endurance athletics about how long to rest to let your muscles heal the damage (Matin, et al, 1983.) Those athletes with severe muscle soreness that interferes with stair usage and performing a squat, probably should not cycle for a month or more. Running may need a longer rest period. (Trust us, it is not the lactate that makes your muscles sore the day after. Lactate generated by exercise has a half life in your body of maybe 90 mins. The math says that in three half lives, the item of interest (e.g. lactate) is basically completely gone! So 4-5 hours later, at the most, the lactate level elevations in your body are zippo.) If your lactate levels are elevated the next day, either you have severe cirrhosis, or are dying of septic shock.
- Training hard all the time, “with the same repetitive schedule, without rest, in a monotonous fashion, commonly leads to poor performance and overtraining syndrome” (Foster & Lehmann, 1997;Foster 1998.)
- Training runs greater than 9-10 miles take so long to recover from if done at or close to race pace, that they rarely lead to any improvement in overall performance in pure runners (multiple authors.) Likewise, for triathletes, running more than 7-8 hours per week may yield no further improvement in ultra-distance triathlon performance (Mark Allen, 1996.)
- Cycling is a non-impact activity. In many ways it may be more tolerable for more years than extensive running, as long as it is done with adequate rest periods. Even so, professional cyclists generally have career spans of only about 10-14 years. Their idea of an off-day during racing season is to only ride 2-3 hours.
- Unbroken competition and training not only may lead to the hypothalamic exhaustion and potential permanent muscle damage described above, but also may lead to loss of performance that may be neurologically-mediated by a reduction in the numbers of muscle fibers that can be recruited by the brain during aerobic activity. This is thought to be a protective response to excess stress. Extensive rest may, at least, partially reverse this process. There are several reported cases involving world class athletes that have achieved at least temporary relief from this problem with the SSRI class of drugs that are used to treat depression such as Prozac. There is evidence from animal experiments in this problem of the reduction in serotonin in parts of the brain, which explains why SSRI drugs have a positive effect. If this is your problem, then your nervous system takes 9 times as long to recover as your muscles (Tudor Bompa.). The use of an SSRI may actually speed recovery (DeLaney speculation)
- Running will not hasten the development of arthritis in your hips and knees. There are too many studies to list here that compare folks in their 50s and 60s that have continued to run since college running careers with matched groups of their sedentary counterparts. The amount of arthritis is the same in both groups! See Noakes 2003 for numerous good studies supporting this fact.
There is more joint damage in those playing sports where they plant a foot and vigorously change direction, such as football, basketball, and soccer. Just going straight ahead down the road or trail is the safest plan with respect to these risks. Note that running off-road or on trails is in the safe group of sports (they studied that one too.)
- Lastly, cycling is a refuge for runners that have developed knee and hip discomfort from running. Because it is a non-impact form of activity, often running may hurt, but cycling does not. With the exception of professional cyclists, others in the sport seem to last longer than pure runners. Also, if you came to triathlon from a running background, you can prolong your triathlon career by reducing the running burden (Noakes, 2003.) Many experts in the field have held that cycling can be a proxy for running.
Our personal experience is that nothing but tempo run workouts of short to medium length that constitute only about 10% of workout hours can still lead to consistent podium placement in triathlon. Running those workouts off road on grass or a trail will further reduce knee impact forces as will a mid-foot stance, short stride, high cadence running style. Comparison of knee impact forces shows that a long stride, low cadence, heel strike runner on pavement may have impact forces with each stride 100% higher than the short stride, mid foot, high cadence runner going the same speed on a trail. Remember that in adults, the bearing surface cartilage in your hips and knees cannot repair itself, so any damage is absolutely cumulative like the wear on your car tires.
If you want to be continuing to train and race for 20 years or more, then after an ultra-distance race you should do little or no running for 6 to 9 weeks depending on the race. You can resume swimming after 2-3 weeks, cycling at ~4 weeks. Racing more than two ultra distance events of any kind per year will definitely shorten your career. (Noakes 2003 pp 664-665). You should understand that you clearly have a limited number of ultra-distance events that you can really go out and race close to your performance maximums. Stacking those events too close together will absolutely reduce the number of successful races you’ll complete.
Note that training for and racing Olympic distance triathlon, 10 km to 10 mile road races, and etc. has much less of a detrimental effect on your body. It is less well studied, but there are presently many well known successful competitors with racing careers extending more than 30 or more years.
As recently as December 2006, Mark Allen wrote about the importance of rest and a reduced number of hours in your program during this time. He, however, in contradistinction to most scientists, does not recommend that you stop running during this time. On the other hand, Mark Allen had a career that did not make the 20 yr span listed above before he was finished.
References:
- Timothy Noakes, MD, DSC. The Lore of Running 2003.
- http://www.humankinetics.com/references/noakes.pdf
- Mark Allen; Triathlete Magazine. Dec 2006.
- Tudor Bompa, Ph.D, Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training, 1999.
- Barron, et al(1985). Hypothalamic dysfunction in overtrained athletes.,Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism 60, 803–06.
- Warhol, et al(1985). Skeletal muscle injury and repair in marathon runners after competition. American Journal of Pathology 118, 331–39.
- Matin, et al (1983). Scintigraphic evaluation of muscle damage following extreme exercise: Concise communication. Journal of Nuclear Medicine 24, 308–11.
- Foster, C. (1998). Monitoring training in athletes with reference to overtraining syndrome. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 30, 1164–68
- Foster, C., Lehmann, M. (1997). Overtraining syndrome. In G.N. Guten (Ed.), Running Injuries. Saunders, Philadelphia, 173–88.
- Derman, et al (1997). The “worn-out athlete”: A clinical approach to chronic fatigue in athletes. Journal of Sports Sciences 15, 341–51.
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