Recovery from intense threshold efforts?

KnightOfTheLongTights

I've been doing a lot of quite intense 40-60 minute aerobic stuff - trying to work at near-threshold effort, really getting it all out.

And I was wondering how long it takes to recover when you dig deep like that.

I've got a race on tomorrow - an 8-mile fell race (running). Yesterday I did a 2 x 20-min 'threshold' session on the exercise bike, hard enough to leave me feeling pretty drained. And the day before I did a very hard 60 mins on the cross trainer - hard enough to feel dizzy and weak-legged afterwards.

I'm doing nothing today except a light 20-minute jog (earlier this morning).

Will I have recovered fully by tomorrow morning , or will I still have some sort of deficit?

Or to the contrary, will I benefit from a step up in aerobic fitness, however slight?

Thansk.

jocksyboy

TBH only you can answer that!

Depends on so many factors- is it an important race or just training? Many people like to taper prior to an event others do blocks of hard training and build in recovery later.

KnightOfTheLongTights

jocksyboy wrote:

TBH only you can answer that!

Depends on so many factors- is it an important race or just training? Many people like to taper prior to an event others do blocks of hard training and build in recovery later.

jocksy, it's more a question born out of curiosity really - as obviously it's too late now anyway, the question re. tomorrow is academic.

You are right in that I am really training for longer events in the spring, so I have not targeted this race.

But it'd be useful to know for future, whether - in general - someone can get away with blasting out a full-on 60 min threshold sesh on a Wednesday, and still be fully recovered for a big race on the Saturday.

Sure it varies from person to person too though.

jibberjim

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

But it'd be useful to know for future, whether - in general - someone can get away with blasting out a full-on 60 min threshold sesh on a Wednesday, and still be fully recovered for a big race on the Saturday.

Sure it varies from person to person too though.

Personally I can generally do repeated threshold intensities at the same power for a number of days. Certainly can comfortably do it wednesday and saturday.

vorsprung

Some people use a heartrate monitor to check their resting HR first thing in the morning. If it is elevated, then this could be due to overtraining

The other thing is, can you repeat the training and still get to the same level of effort?

If your HR isn't affected and you can do the effort then you can cope with the training load

SBezza

There is no set recovery period, people recover from different efforts at differing rates. It comes down to how your body can handle the workload, and what you eat drink between sessions.

Only you can know how you recover, but a days recovery would probably be OK for most people, though if it was an important race doing threshold intervals 48 hours before is not likely to be the best thing.

Certainly if you do a threshold session mid week, you should be well recovered by the weekend.

KnightOfTheLongTights

thanks all, esp. SBezza, that answers my question

KnightOfTheLongTights

as postscript, is there any science on how quickly aerobic gains accrue from such threshold sessions?

SBezza

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

as postscript, is there any science on how quickly aerobic gains accrue from such threshold sessions?

Again we are all completely different and respond to stimulus in different ways, there is no way to tell. Most coaches would say a particular block of training will take ~6weeks + to reaps the benefits, but this is just a ball park figure, and as to how long you can expect to see gains is anyone guess.

KnightOfTheLongTights

wow six weeks really? I'd assumed base endurance efforts might take that long to pay off, but had thought 'threshold-raising' efforts might snap in a bit faster ...

P_Tucker

Nah, the general gist is: you train hard, this damages you, you recover and your body overcompensates and makes you a little bit stronger/faster. You'll be stronger/faster by the time you've recovered which will be normally 1-2 days - but you'll not be able to measure it easily.

mattshrops

Nah, the general gist is: you train hard, this damages you, you recover and your body overcompensates and makes you a little bit stronger/faster. You'll be stronger/faster by the time you've recovered which will be normally 1-2 days - but you'll not be able to measure it easily.


i think this is in relation to muscular adaption and aerobic takes longer as sbezza said- BUT i aint no expert

SBezza

Yes feeling fresh and actually being more powerful are 2 different things. If you think you can measure power increases (say your FTP) in days, then you need a bit of education of how a body adapts, it doesn't do it very quickly at all.

You need progessive and sustained overload to get decent adaptions.

P_Tucker

SBezza wrote:

Yes feeling fresh and actually being more powerful are 2 different things. If you think you can measure power increases (say your FTP) in days, then you need a bit of education of how a body adapts, it doesn't do it very quickly at all.

You need progessive and sustained overload to get decent adaptions.

Links always appreciated.

As I understand it, one of the first adaptations to this kind of thing is an increase in blood volume which doesn't take very long at all.

mrlobber

Not so sure, really... To produce "quality blood", your body has to work quite a time.

For example, for blood donors, the plasma of blood ("volume") reproduces really quickly (2-3 days), but mainly on water basis, while the red cells (which obviously are the main oxygen carrying "transport") need a month, even up to two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_dono ... _donations

Thus, I doubt that intense training suddenly would make the body to produce red cells really quickly... but providing counterevidence is always welcome

P_Tucker

mrlobber wrote:

Not so sure, really... To produce "quality blood", your body has to work quite a time.

For example, for blood donors, the plasma of blood ("volume") reproduces really quickly (2-3 days), but mainly on water basis, while the red cells (which obviously are the main oxygen carrying "transport") need a month, even up to two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_dono ... _donations

Thus, I doubt that intense training suddenly would make the body to produce red cells really quickly... but providing counterevidence is always welcome

Meh, I'm probably wrong. IIRC (and google is being most unhelpful) for some reason even increasing the plasma only facilitates oxygen delivery, although I can't for the life of me think how.

ride_whenever

Potentially increasing the volume but keeping the red blood cell count the same will drop the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood, resulting in faster transfer of O2 into the red blood cells despite a reduced total capacity for o2.

That makes sense I think, although it could potentially be complete and utter balls!

P_Tucker

ride_whenever wrote:

Potentially increasing the volume but keeping the red blood cell count the same will drop the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood, resulting in faster transfer of O2 into the red blood cells despite a reduced total capacity for o2.

That makes sense I think, although it could potentially be complete and utter balls!

Yeah, I was just about to say that. Er....

Alex_Simmons/RST

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

But it'd be useful to know for future, whether - in general - someone can get away with blasting out a full-on 60 min threshold sesh on a Wednesday, and still be fully recovered for a big race on the Saturday.

Sure it varies from person to person too though.

Graeme Obree set the world hour record the day after he buried himself with a failed attempt.

Alex_Simmons/RST

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

as postscript, is there any science on how quickly aerobic gains accrue from such threshold sessions?

Plenty.
Some adaptations are quite quick (days), others take many years.

chrisw12

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

But it'd be useful to know for future, whether - in general - someone can get away with blasting out a full-on 60 min threshold sesh on a Wednesday, and still be fully recovered for a big race on the Saturday.

Sure it varies from person to person too though.

Graeme Obree set the world hour record the day after he buried himself with a failed attempt.

He also broke the 10 mile record on the Saturday then broke the 50 mile record on the Sunday. (Or other way round)

On the flip of this though, don't pursuit times go up from qualifying to finals, i.e. they don't fully recover in the course of a few hours from a 4 min all out effort?

Team Banana Spokesman

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

as postscript, is there any science on how quickly aerobic gains accrue from such threshold sessions?

Plenty.
Some adaptations are quite quick (days), others take many years.

any info on this 'science'? I would like to know more about this. any good books, websites, research papers?

KnightOfTheLongTights

OK, interesting stuff. I know from fellracing about tapering etc, especially for longer endurance events.

I was curious to know if you are working towards a more distant goal, how much one's form suffers in the intervening races you don't target.

Also, if one has picked up a niggle or an injury that has interrupted training in the weeks before a race - what is the boundary between doing some intense last-ditch training in an effort to get a fitness boost and tiring yourself out?

Alex_Simmons/RST

Team Banana Spokesman wrote:

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

as postscript, is there any science on how quickly aerobic gains accrue from such threshold sessions?

Plenty.
Some adaptations are quite quick (days), others take many years.

any info on this 'science'? I would like to know more about this. any good books, websites, research papers?

Any decent exercise physiology textbook would be a good place to start.

Perhaps "Textbook of Work Physiology - Physiological Bases of Exercise" by Astrand & Rodahl.

or "Exercise Physiology" by McArdle, Katch & Katch

Alex_Simmons/RST

KnightOfTheLongTights wrote:

OK, interesting stuff. I know from fellracing about tapering etc, especially for longer endurance events.

I was curious to know if you are working towards a more distant goal, how much one's form suffers in the intervening races you don't target.

Also, if one has picked up a niggle or an injury that has interrupted training in the weeks before a race - what is the boundary between doing some intense last-ditch training in an effort to get a fitness boost and tiring yourself out?

These questions are so specific to an individual that it isn't really possible to answer them.

There are period in training where one can feel like superman even though they have been training very hard for a long period. Then you back off when needed and can feel like rubbish. But later, if you get it right, you can get that "rip the cranks off" sensation.

There is however, a reasonably good correlation between fitness and training load (to a point), and form which comes with fitness and some freshness.

Team Banana Spokesman

Thankyou Alex. I will look into getting those books asap.

Team Banana Spokesman

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

There are period in training where one can feel like superman even though they have been training very hard for a long period. Then you back off when needed and can feel like rubbish.

True. I can handle lots of L4 when I have a high ATL/low TSB from doing lots of L4. Its tougher to do L4 (or lots of L3) when I take a break but should be able to cope because i'm fresh.

That phrase 'the more you train, the more you can train' comes to mind.