Insight

A week after my worst nightmare I believe I have some more insight of what could have happened last Saturday.

Initially I thought it could be dehydration the Thursday before, or maybe nutrition changes on the 10 days leading to the event (since I arrived to Australia). Nutrition I believed that changed a little in Australia, but could not possibly cause such affect on the legs (and legs only) on that Friday and Saturday. Hydration was what I leaned towards, I thought that maybe if I did dehydrate myself badly on Thursday, that Friday could have been bad, and maybe Saturday. I had about 8 liters of water on Friday since my initial symptom to Saturday morning. Likely it was not caused by dehydration… So what else changed? What did I do different from all other 16 races starting with the UBC triathlon in March? Mmm… rested?

For this race I actually tapered for about 2 weeks. For none of my other races excluding Nationals were I did a 5 day taper I rested at all. Maybe an easy long day on Friday and a shorter 2hr day on Saturdays, but that was it. After nationals I was feeling good and I put in an almost normal week (3 weeks between Nationals and Worlds). The week after the taper started, less volume, almost same intensity. I was feeling good and strong. The week after (week leading to Worlds) I decreased my volume to about ½ the usual, and kept key workouts in. Despite doing much less I did not feel I was recovering as fast as usual, but I believed that by the end of the week I would be good to go.

Thursday leading to the event I was supposed to do 1.5 hrs easy, but I decided to take it completely off (I posted about that on that day so I am not making stuff up). I felt I had many things to do that day but I also thought that I needed to recover. I was still not feeling as good as I believed I should have and doing 1.5 hrs easy was not going to be beneficial at all. Anyways, Friday came and pain. Saturday came and I had one of the biggest pains ever; mostly muscular but also to my soul/ego/whatever its called (I was sore going up and down the stairs for 3 days just from running from the water to my bike, no BS…) I took some time off, like 5 days off off (only rode my bike for <20min commuting). 2 days ago I decided to go for a 1.5 hrs self guided “tourist” bike tour of the city. I averaged 22kph, not really hard right? The following day I was quite sore again; same pain as the day of the race just not as bad. Yesterday I went for a swim and despite not having the same effect as the easy ride, it felt like I was in repair mode. Not that I could not push the pace, I just did not want to, and my body was very very happy with it.

Conclusion: I think I was wwwwaaaayyy overtrained at the end of the year. It was a tough training year; I worked hard and got faster than ever. Although through the year I did feel at some points that I was tired and sometimes fatigued, I was still able to push very hard when I wanted (either races or key workouts) and so things seemed to be coming along nicely. At nationals I tapered a few days and probably was not enough to shut my body down, but 2 weeks for Worlds did the trick.

Learning: Next training year I will make sure that this does not happen to me again (none of it: the overtraining, or the catastrophe at a key race) I will design a better plan, maybe add some easy weeks and do them as scheduled whether I feel I need them or not, maybe finally get a coach, maybe make sure that easy workouts are actually easy, maybe get a powertap to be able to use it together with a HRM and RPE to help catch any patterns before is too late (ie, fatigue).

For now I will keep resting. My body will tell me when its ready to start nice and easy again by not making me sore on a 22kph ride. Hopefully this is what happened a week ago, its theory number 3 already. Unless I come up with theory 4, and it makes even more sense, I will stick with this one (or unless I take 3 weeks off and it happens again, then there is something else wrong –fingers crossed).

Previous post has some pictures of the last couple of days including the 22kph ride!

Facundo