Recovery time giggle - V6 s/w

Sorry, but this had me giggling... As you will see, I usually don't look too much at recovery time. But... a recovery time of 0 hours, "Train as normal" this morning?!

Having trained the last 6 days straight. Last Monday I had a one day break having ran a hard halfmarathon (PB) on Sunday, which I followed up with a MTB ride when I returned from the race. I did not take the HM all that seriously and trained at various intensities the week leading into it.

So all in all, 18 training runs or MTB rides, some runs easier, some days multiple sessions. Over the last 17 days. The last of which was a low intensity (relative) session of almost 2 hours Trailrun in the mountain, 550m gain.

Yet Garmin seems to think I'm good to go!

WTH? Was it the last low-intensity session that threw it? My ride on Thu alone said 4 days recovery when I finished the ride. Since then another 3(!!) MTB rides, none of which was flat, Saturday's one was lung-bursting hard. Plus one parkrun for fun and yesterdays low-intensity run. On it's own that ride's recovery would have taken till this morning...

Am I the only one?

0 mcbadger over 7 years ago

Is your max HR correct in the watch?

0 seabeegps over 7 years ago

Indeed - 190. Zones set up as per usual. Not new to HR training.

I incidentally actually returned to confirm the following, which I remembered to add after posting:
HR is set up. ;)
7-day training load is deep into the red, having done nothing today except go to work.
I record Run and Trail Run HR with Optical HR. MTB and Bike (road, which I rarely do) is with Ext HR.

BTW - am I also the only one that has to log on after posting less than an hour earlier despite having ticked "remember me"?

0 SUSSAMB over 7 years ago

BTW - am I also the only one that has to log on after posting less than an hour earlier despite having ticked "remember me"?

No, it's a forum issue that Garmin are aware of but haven't yet fixed.

0 carl.andersson over 7 years ago

Indeed - 190. Zones set up as per usual. Not new to HR training.

7-day training load is deep into the red, having done nothing today except go to work.

BTW - am I also the only one that has to log on after posting less than an hour earlier despite having ticked "remember me"?

Maybe your recovery hours number is so high that it's reset to 0?

0 HermanB over 7 years ago

WTH?

You might look here for clues.

https://www.firstbeat.com/en/consumer-feature/recovery-time/

For the most part, Recovery Time is very closely tied to your the Training Effect score(s). If you think about TE-scores as the degree of homeostasis disturbance (which you should because that's what it's calculating), then Recovery Time is simply the length of time it ought to take for your body to bring things back to equilibrium. When your fitness level (VO2max) is high a couple things happen, 1) low-intensity activities are unlikely to have any substantial impact, and 2) your body recovers faster.

Maybe keep an eye on your TE-scores and your recovery time together to see if they make sense.

0 seabeegps over 7 years ago

Herman, I really appreciate this feedback - and others you have given through this forum. I agree, I seem to have a quite high VO2max, esp for my age. Even though I don't feel like it always! Maybe it's the company I keep! ;)

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm just stating what happened and what I saw. I know I've got some weird high HR that may screw around some formulas. And as stated previously, I tend to ignore recovery values quite often, until I saw this... So just putting it out there for interest sake. I appreciate what you guys are trying to do! I will keep an eye on it in future just for interest sake to add to the topic.

If I could screenshot the training log, I would.... but taking it back some more. I have injured myself on a longish trailrun with a buddy on 3 Sept. Not so much a serious injury in my mind, more a niggle. (That said: I am JUST returning from medical advice not to run for a couple of weeks, but only cycle. Apparently one of the deep small muscles behind the knee is somewhat stuffed.) Now, but for other activities and this niggle. On 17 Sept I ran a PB marathon, followed by a Half-marathon PB (without worrying, carboloading, tapering) on 8 Oct - I did not treat this as an "A"-race.

The one significant thing I see in your article is that 4 days seem to be some kind of upper limit.
Many a long story short. After that half, I did a MTB ride in the local mountain - same day, just after arriving home. One of my fellow runners gave me a good speech about that... (despite the fact that I trained 4 times in the 3 days leading up to the HM). Following that I had one day of rest, then an easy run, followed by a mountain run. Then a very hard 50k MTB ride. That on it's own was rated as (the magical?) 4 days recovery.
Problem was, due to circumstances I did not "listen". I went for another hard MTB ride the next day. The day after that I had an easy run with my daughter, followed by a short but very intense ride on the MTB. (I mean, I broke several 4-year-old PB's on segments I regularly ride by more than a minute! - despite having trained hard the previous couple of days. - my opinion: motivated by external circumstances)
Even if I had 0 hours recovery, just that hard ride. To then follow that up with a 2 hour run with 550m of elevation, no matter how casual I took it at certain stages, to then see hey dude, you're ready to roll for a race! Yeah, it's just not... right. My recovery run (having had Monday completely off) today was a struggle. Racing? (as in 0 hours recorvery) No option.

Therein lies my confusion.