How to get your legs feeling snappy again

Forgot to add this:

My training for the past two weeks has been as follows:

Monday - 6 miles easy @7:10ish

Tuesday- Tri-meet. 1600 (4:29), 800 (2:10), 4x4 (59). Ran the 1600 hard then the others as workouts per Coach's instructions.

Wednesday - 6 miles easy @7:10ish

Thursday- workout:

1 mile easy, then 3 sets of:

2x200 @32-33 w/ 200 jog, 800 @2:14 w/ 800 jog, then 300 @46 with 900 jog

Then finish easy to 8 miles

Friday: 6 miles easy @7:10ish

Saturday: workout

1 mile easy then 3 sets of :

1 mile tempo, 200 jog

2x200 w/ 200 jog for the first, 400 after the second. First @33 then the Second @31

Finish easy to 8 miles

Sunday: 12 miles easy @7:15

Monday: workout

1 mile easy then 3 sets of:

2x200 @30-31 w/400 jog the 400 @62 with 800 jog

Finish easy to 8 miles

Tuesday: 7 miles easy @7:20

Wednesday: scaled back workout:

1 mile easy, then 2 sets of:

1 mile tempo @5:25, 200 jog, 2x200 @29-30 with/ 400 jog.

Finish easy to 7 miles

Thursday: 6 miles easy @7:20

Friday (yesterday): Invite

mile (4:30) and 3200 (9:36) double

There was a little over an hour between the end of the mile and the start of my 3200. My legs felt like crap even in the first race.

Saturday (Today): 11.25 miles @7:40. Was supposed to do 12 but my legs felt horrible. This was in the morning, about 11-12 hours after the end of my 3200.

Just figured this may help give everyone an idea about what I've been doing recently and possibly aid in any responses I get.

My apologies for my poor formatting.

You have great endurance

Try icing your legs to help them recover. An ice bath would be best, or you can use something like a bag of frozen peas.

If you try icing let us know if you think it helped.

Doing some barefoot strides on the turf will help. I'd recommend doing these 1-3 times a week, unless they make things feel worse. Do no more than 4, and do maybe 80y for each one. This should help you as you near your district meet. Do your last set of these two days before the meet and remember to recover and taper well. It's not uncommon for runners to have dead legs in weeks of hard training, but decreasing mileage as you get closer to your meet will definitely help with this. Best of luck!

ice ice baby wrote:

You have great endurance

Try icing your legs to help them recover. An ice bath would be best, or you can use something like a bag of frozen peas.

If you try icing let us know if you think it helped.

First, thank you for the compliment. Secondly, have you tried ice before? I have always have been confused whether to use ice or heat for stuff like this and general soreness.

mcvred wrote:

Doing some barefoot strides on the turf will help. I'd recommend doing these 1-3 times a week, unless they make things feel worse. Do no more than 4, and do maybe 80y for each one. This should help you as you near your district meet. Do your last set of these two days before the meet and remember to recover and taper well. It's not uncommon for runners to have dead legs in weeks of hard training, but decreasing mileage as you get closer to your meet will definitely help with this. Best of luck!

Thank you for our advice, I will definitely try to add this into my routine. Could you elaborate on what yiu would consider a good taper?

I agree with taking an ice bath. Actually just soaking for 15~20 min in cold bath water is usually enough. Best if right after a workout.

Cold is better than warm due to the reduction of inflammation. Warm soaking, while it does feel good and is soothing, doesn’t help with inflammation. Cold is better.

I find that if my legs are sluggish after a few weeks of long ultra training in the summer, an ice bath does the trick in waking them up.

Good luck in your upcoming meet!!

DistanceRunner68 wrote:

mcvred wrote:

Doing some barefoot strides on the turf will help. I'd recommend doing these 1-3 times a week, unless they make things feel worse. Do no more than 4, and do maybe 80y for each one. This should help you as you near your district meet. Do your last set of these two days before the meet and remember to recover and taper well. It's not uncommon for runners to have dead legs in weeks of hard training, but decreasing mileage as you get closer to your meet will definitely help with this. Best of luck!

Thank you for our advice, I will definitely try to add this into my routine. Could you elaborate on what yiu would consider a good taper?

Tapering should be reducing mileage and workout duration/intensity (to an extent) in order to prepare for what should be your hardest race(s) of the season. I would recommend running your last workout no closer than 4 days before your district meet, and as you near the meet, your workouts should have intervals of gradually shorter durations (a great final workout before a district meet is 2-4x(300, 200)@ mile pace) so you aren't really gaining fitness as making your body comfortable with running the paces needed for a great performance. For a high school runner, I'd start tapering 10 days out from the meet, reducing the volume of your easy runs gradually and running shorter, faster workouts (which should feel pretty comfortable). No mile repeats or 3k breakdowns, really focus on turnover and maintaining your form for these workouts. Remember to race with guts!

Most coaches don't recommend ice baths anymore unless you are injured. I use warm showers, just standing there, I also sometimes take saunas.

SprintTriathlon wrote:

Most coaches don't recommend ice baths anymore unless you are injured. I use warm showers, just standing there, I also sometimes take saunas.

I prefer a sports massage (with a happy ending).

The 10pcs of whole fruit per day method Tends to work.

runrincerepeat wrote:

The 10pcs of whole fruit per day method Tends to work.

I've never heard of this. Details please?

Thank you for the elaboration, that's how I thought a taper was supposed to go, I just wanted validation of that idea. As I originally said, my coach seems to think that having a normal, hard week this week then a scaled-back workout Monday, two easy days then Districts Thrusday is a taper. Based on what you said, I'm assuming he is banking on me going to states, and is tapering for that? (States is a week after districts here). Do you think that my legs will be able to be rejuvenated (at least back to normal) before Districts despite this two week plan? I've hit every pace he has asked of me so far during workouts, and I don't want to end that now, but at the same time, I don't want to screw over my legs and then try to get them back to normal in 2 days. As for racing with guys, I absolutely will! I don't know how to race any other way!

OLD ULTRA - Thank you for your input. I will definitely try to ice my legs. I unfortunately don't have access to a bathtub (only have a shower) so ice packs will have to do. To others who have suggested heat, if icing doesn't seem to help, I will try heating. I have had success with it in the past, but i was just trying to get rid of aches/soreness rather than dealing with dead legs

Legs feel a little better, not as heavy and my workouts haven't suffered too much. Will have about 4-5 easy days (one long run) after today so I hope a couple easy runs in a row will help. Icing didn't seem to do anything to help or hurt. I think I'm going to try to heat them and see if that helps at all.

If this is the same coach you had last year, I'd listen to them. I looked up your results and you've dropped massive amounts of time across all of your events. Sure, you've got McGoey and Beveridge to contend with in that 3200 spot, but it seems like your coach believes you're gonna make it to Ship and is gearing for that. From across the state and over a computer, I'd trust the coach, (s)he clearly has you moving this year.

lmao

how about taking a day off dork!

PAFan wrote:

If this is the same coach you had last year, I'd listen to them. I looked up your results and you've dropped massive amounts of time across all of your events. Sure, you've got McGoey and Beveridge to contend with in that 3200 spot, but it seems like your coach believes you're gonna make it to Ship and is gearing for that. From across the state and over a computer, I'd trust the coach, (s)he clearly has you moving this year.

Thank you for your compliments regarding my time drop. I really appreciate that. Unfortunately my Freshman times don't quite reflect the what I could have been. I unfortunately had to use that season as a rebuilding phase due to my massive weight/drop from nutritional issues in XC, so the drops probably wouldnt have been that big but still enough to be confident about in regards to my coaching. I definitely think coach has me in the shape I need to be in to make place well. I guess this thread was just me worrying about not feeling great like I would to feel going into the big race. I absolutely have faith in my coach, we did our last legit workout and will have the next couple days as easy/recovery runs (he decided against doing a workout Friday). Definitely helped me relax and realise that we will have plenty of easy days to get back to feeling good.

Quick question, fellow runner or just a running fan?

For me, no hard workouts the week before a big meet.

The day before a meet is a rest day, or just warming up and strides.

Also, no long runs during track season, easy repeats instead:

6x1k with 800m recovery jogs +5x100m

10x 400m with 400m recovery

15x 200m with 200m recovery

Paces for a 30min 10k runner: 3:23-3:08 for 1k, 1:15-1:09 for 400m, 34-31 for 200m.

Paces for a 35min 10k runner: 3:53-3:38 for 1k, 1:26-1:20 for 400m, 38-34 for 200m.

Instead of recovery runs I do extra easy 400m or 200m repeats.

ice ice baby wrote:

You have great endurance

Try icing your legs to help them recover. An ice bath would be best, or you can use something like a bag of frozen peas.

If you try icing let us know if you think it helped.

Ice baths inhibit recovery. Cryo chambers do nothing.

I don't have HS running background (started running in late 20s) and don't have natural speed (PB for 400 is only 62) but I coached myself to a PBs of 16:3x 5k, 34:5x 10k and 77:3x half.

From my experience the legs get heavy and unresponsive for three main reasons – neurological (overload), muscular (damage), but most often it is just the result of insufficient energy stores (too low carbohydrate uptake vs mileage/intensity).

So I would start to address this issue by evaluating your calorie uptake and perhaps upping carbohydrate intake. Insufficient glucose stores in muscles makes you weak and gives you this typical grind feeling. The best way would be to have some sports drink. Remember that carbohydrate uptake is dependent on water intake, so make sure you get hydrated. Also don't up fat much as fat will slow carb uptake and make you gain weight rapidly.

To address neurological overload, if any, there is only one way -- rest. This is either complete rest or significantly lower mileage (say 50-60% of typical). You can keep the intensity up, but lower the interval/repetition count by as much as 50-60%. From my experience I would day that approx 3 such days is enough to resolve neurological overload (when i was younger it was enough with 2 days, but now getting closer to mid 30s I would say its closer to 4 days for me). Taking 2 days completely off of running and avoiding staying on legs and then having one day easy running will make you feel sharp again.

Finally, each quality session results in some muscle damage. The amount of damage induced depends on what and how hard was done. The harder/longer/stronger the session the more muscle damage can be expected. Usually significant weakness lasts for 4-5 days after heavy sessions and then rapidly improves. But in extreme cases it may take up to two weeks for muscle damage to be completely repaired by your body. There is not much you can do about it except letting the time pass and allowing yourself to heal (and get stronger).