Unveiling the Secrets of a Recovery Run: Explore the Purpose, Benefits, and How to Incorporate this Essential Element into Your Training Routine
Do recovery runs actually help you recover? How often should you be doing them? Here’s your guide to recovery runs and why they’re important.
Going out for a second run of the day may hardly sound like recovery. What is a recovery run, anyway, and what’s the point? How do you distinguish between junk kms and recovery kms? Understanding this workout and the benefits it can provide can help you level up your running, recover faster, and increase your running fitness.
Why Do a Recovery Run?
Recovery runs are best executed after a moderate or high-effort workout, race, or strength training session. Endurance athletes often suffer from sore muscles after these types of workouts and recovery runs are meant to loosen up the body by increasing blood flow and flushing out waste. This is vital to performance, as stiffness and soreness can limit your mobility, diminish your power output, and make workouts uncomfortable and daunting to complete.
When you work out, especially at high intensities, several physiological processes take place that increased blood flow can help remedy, as seen in the chart below.
For athletes who are training more than 50 km per week or practice multiple sports (like triathletes and duathletes), a recovery run can be a great way to flush the major movers and jump-start the recovery process.
How Are Recovery Runs Different From Easy Runs?
The primary difference between an easy aerobic run and a recovery run lies in their intent. An everyday aerobic run, focused on maintaining a Zone 1 or Zone 2 heart rate, can be considered a recovery run. However, recovery runs typically last 20-30 minutes and aim to clear metabolic waste after intense efforts. Longer runs generate more waste and may require extended recovery time, making them distinct from recovery runs.
Active v. Passive Recovery
There are two types of recovery: active recovery and passive recovery. Going out for a recovery run, completing an easy spin on your bike, or doing 20-30 minutes of yoga are examples of active recovery. Using a massage gun or compression boots, taking a nap, or getting a massage would be considered passive recovery.
The biggest differentiation is that active recovery increases heart rate and blood pressure, resulting in vasodilation (i.e., the dilation of blood vessels) and the transportation of metabolic waste.
Which Is Right for Me?
Choosing the right recovery method depends on your body and circumstances. For those prone to injury or running less than 24 km per week, a recovery run may not be the best choice. Instead, low-impact options like cycling or yoga could be more suitable.
However, athletes covering 40-60 km per week may benefit from a short recovery run following intense workouts to boost mileage and recovery. Ultimately, your choice should align with your body’s needs and recovery goals.
Does Gender Influence Recovery?
Gender does indeed influence recovery, as shown by a recent study comparing men and women after a half marathon. Women tend to recover faster, likely due to lower muscle mass, force, and power compared to men. Sex hormones like estrogen in women may also reduce exercise-induced muscle damage and delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
For female athletes, where they are in their menstrual cycle plays a significant role in recovery. Fatigue tends to be higher during menstruation and metabolic demands increase by over 6%, affecting glycogen stores, recovery, and overall fatigue perception. This heightened caloric demand spans three to five days during the menstrual cycle, potentially complicating fueling strategies for races.
At the end of the day, performance can only improve by applying stress to the body and then recovering adequately. Increased adaptation to training stimuli leads to improved fitness as well as the ability to manage greater fatigue. In other words, the fitter you get, the less time you need to recover.
So, it can reasonably be said that a true recovery run can exist, meaning you can simultaneously apply a small stress load, increase blood flow to muscles and recover. Simply put, recovery runs are a straightforward way to get real performance benefits.
Stuart has competed in triathlons from Sprint to Ironman distance. As a qualified Triathlon Australia, Australian Athletics Run Coach, and a certified Ironman coach, he is aware of the importance of balancing training with lifestyle, thus complementing other important aspects of an athlete’s life (family, work, study commitments, etc.).
Contact Stuart at rdytotri@gmail.com
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