RECOVERY FOR MARATHONERS; HOW TO APPROACH IT AND WHAT TO USE?

While mass events have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still the opportunity to exercise outdoors which will aid those taking part in marathons to maintain their fitness for rearranged events like the London Marathon in October.

We’re delighted to bring the final stage of preparing yourself for such an event, with this blog from Rob Duffield; Professor of Sport & Exercise Science – University of Technology Sydney and Head of Research & Development – Football Federation Australia.

You’ll find the full list of references to correspond with points included throughout at the bottom of the article for further reading.

Understand load and fatigue to guide recovery:
Recovery is a multi-factorial process that results in the return of physiological or psychological systems to their pre-exercise state. Accordingly, the need for, and timeline of, recovery is dependent on the extent of fatigue, which in turn is based on the load or volume of the exercise bout.5 By understanding the volume or load of training/competition, it helps inform the type and duration of recovery required for appropriate readiness. Marathon training requires large volumes of prolonged duration training that accumulate through weeks and months into a competitive bout; with competition often the largest and most intense load of the training cycle.2,3 Thus, marathon training and competition results in large depletions of metabolic substrates (carbohydrates and fat), increase protein degradation and muscle damage, increased thermoregulatory and cardiovascular strain, decreased neuromuscular power, increased perceptual or mental fatigue and the general aches and pains of high volume loads (but you love it all!).1,7 By understanding the loads, fatigue and resulting physiological and perceptual responses, it makes planning and instigating recovery a more precise and beneficial process.

Recovery; more than just rest:
Recovery can be considered a multifactorial timeline of the return of performance, physiological and perceptual systems to the pre-exercise state.10 Recovery timelines for training will depend on the duration, intensity and familiarity with the training session, though is likely to be 24-48h.1 For recovery from competition, it is often presumed that a half-marathon takes 4-6 days and a full marathon takes 10-14 days recovery;8 but individual timelines will vary based on conditions, training status and performance. However, recovery is not just one system or state, and various body systems can be at different stages of recovery based on the exercise load and the timeline following exercise.8 Theoretically, the best method to promote recovery would be to remove any further exercise or training load; however, for devoted and competitive athletes, this is rarely possible or acceptable. Further, preliminary evidence suggests that increased aerobic capacity and training exposure can potentially assist the recovery process in team-sports; as greater training-induced adaptations make any given session easier to perform, and thus reduce the ensuing recovery time. 6,10 Regardless, ideally you want to slowly increase your training load without having too many missed training sessions; thus, engagement in recovery interventions and processes to assist adaptation and readiness to perform become important. Hence, recovery interventions that assist increase metabolic fuel storage, assist protein uptake, decrease muscle soreness and reduce perceptual fatigue and tiredness may all be relevant.9

Recovery Interventions: what’s available?

Recovery interventions can be thought of as “big drivers” of recovery or additional “small helpers”. The big drivers to assist recovery include 1) nutrition and hydration intake 2) adjustment of training load/exposure and 3) duration and quality of sleep. More specifically;