As I stated in Part 1 of this quartet of articles, after explaining the need to monitor your heart rate and blood pressure, and to keep a training diary as a useful tool to aid your training, I would like to examine the training factor of restoration shown in detail. As you can see from the diagram below, restoration, or resting so as to recover between training sessions, is the key to your success in long distance running. However, a great many people who train for long distance running do not realise this, train too hard, do not allow enough rest, and leave their races behind in their training.
In the first article I examined the first topic of the seven listed below, and then in the second part, the second of the seven topics, for which I have written the following description as something which may be familiar to you:
'He was not so hot to trot today, his legs felt sore after the previous day's hard training session on the track. So this was a recovery run, steady, even paced, without trying to run fast, in fact, without trying at all.'
Aspects of restoration
1. How to aid restoration of the skeletal-muscular system
2. How to aid restorcardio-respiratoryo-respiratory system
3. How to restore the exchange process
4. What to overtrainedave overtrained
5. Nutrition - what food you need
6. Nurture psychological restoration
7. Lifestyle - yours!
Here I look at the third and fourth aspects listed above. So read on to find out how to recover, how to restore your body before training again, and particularly, before training hard again.
Restoration of the exchange process
As a result of training your body goes through physiological changes, which include changes in your metabolism. There is a very important aspect to this for long distance endurance runners. Your body exchanges fats, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, and salt and water balance. When you run, your body uses these foodstuffs and depletes them. When you rest, the foodstuffs are replenished during the restoration period.
This is particularly important with carbohydrates. These are the main source of energy for doing work, or in other words, carbohydrates are the fuels on which you run - like the petrol in a car. Of course, during work the reserves held in the liver and muscles are depleted. After that, they need replenishing i.e. after a hard training session.
If carbohydrate restoration is incomplete, you cannot do as much work. Supercompensation does not replenish carbohydrates, so you have to do something yourself to replenish them.
