Recovery

As you may remember, a couple of my athletes did their first Ironman a few week ago. This event has bought up the topic of post Ironman recovery, which is always an interesting one, more specifically, how long does it take.

This is one of those how long is a piece of string questions, and it is also a piece of string with several different aspects to it.

I am not a sports scientist, but from what I have read, the physical recovery from an Ironman takes between two and three weeks. Yes, there are plenty of examples of Pros winning an Ironman one week and then winning a 70.3 the weekend after, I remember watching Terenzo Bozzone do it in 2016 and it was amazing. However, let's just assume for a now that those guys are the outliers, for the rest of us, let's talk about two or three weeks.

To be honest, when I have done them I think I have felt the effects for longer than two or three weeks. The rule of thumb people used to talk about was 6 weeks for full recovery, which 'feels' about right to me, but I have no science to back that up. I have raced a 70.3 a month after an Ironman and while the race went okay, I think I was still feeling some effects from the event. Most 'normal' people I know who have tried to back up an Ironman a week or two later (I know a few who have tried) have either had a DNF, or a particularly slow race. As a coach once told me, an Ironman really screws you up and so it takes your body a bit of time to figure out what the hell just happened.

After an Ironman I usually recommend athletes have at least two weeks of unstructured training. By this I mean, take it easy, don't run for at least a week, only ride easy etc, just relax. Many athletes actually take much longer than that, but I would usually recommend two weeks before thinking about exercise again in any serious capacity.

In my experience even after two weeks most people struggle with any serious sort of training. They usually find they fatigue easily and don't have much go. These things are completely normal (body is still freaking out remember) and so I normally recommend that people keep the training easy once they return to structured training for a couple more weeks.

After those couple of weeks of light training I find athletes are usually physically ready to get back to tougher training, although as with all things this is quite individual so they need to be extra mindful about fatigue, niggles, illness etc and be willing to cut things short if the body just doesn't have it that day. By six weeks I find that people who want to train are normally back at it.

That is the physical side of it. The other part of this equation is of course the mental side. Ironman training and racing takes a huge mental toll. The long hours of training, the loss of social life, the time away from family etc all wear thin after a while. For some athletes once they finish an Ironman, they are happy to not think about training again for quite some time. Regaining that mental energy and motivation can take a bit more than 4 to 6 weeks for some people.

For those that are struggling for motivation post Ironman, I actually think it is important for them to take a bit of time to get energised again, no matter how long that takes. It takes a lot of drive to train and race in Ironman and if you on a low ebb it is going to effect training sooner or later. You don't want to return to training before you really 'want' to return to training, otherwise you are going to end up resenting the training sooner or later.

Luckily for a lot of athletes they are excited to get training again before their body is ready. In fact for many Ironman athletes the challenge is actually the opposite, making them recover for long enough post event before they tear back into things.