Rest and recovery - don't panic

Strava ‘fitness’ scores - the basics

As a premium subscriber to Strava I get access to the ‘Fitness’ score. This is what Strava tells you about it:

While fitness is a complicated concept, it can be simplified to an accumulation of training. The Fitness Score is calculated using Training Load and/or Relative Effort to measure your daily training, and an impulse-response model to quantify its effect over time. This will intuitively capture the development of fitness from training, as well as the loss of fitness during a break.

I think the key here is not to get too over-excited about it and it is a handy metric for tracking broader sweeps and general trends. I wear a Garmin watch and I use the wrist-based heart rate measurement with it. Occasionally it glitches and either stops reading or it reckons I am doing some full-blooded intervals when I’m not. Largely, though, I’m happy enough with the reliability to not bother with the extra faff of a chest strap.

That means Strava uses that heartrate measure to calculate a Relative Effort score and that seems to be the main metric. I’ve no doubt there are some other tweaks in the algorithm and, doubtless, if I dived into some internet forum there will be people debating its merits and flaws. For me, it does the job and it has broadly aligned with my own perceptions of my fitness and my experience.

The image also includes the ‘Fatigue’ line. Strava says:

Conceptually, fatigue is easy to understand; it’s that tired feeling which limits your performance. We model it the same way as fitness, but on a shorter time scale. You’ll notice the score go up quickly after a couple hard days, but also go down quickly as you take a few days off.

The ‘Form’ line is worked out as the difference with the Fatigue and Fitness scores. I’ve left it off here for clarity.

My training load in the past year and in the CWU build up

Today, my Strava Fitness score is 118 and it peaked at 125 after my run four days ago. That is a new record for me and, to be fair, I have probably never been fitter. (Perhaps excluding some specific moments when I was on an expedition back in the day.)

The graph shows a year of work but I have genuinely no idea how this compares to other people who might be considering CWU. I do reckon I have been a very consistent runner, though not necessarily with lots of epic long runs, and I like to think, I hope anyway, that the area under the curve is important here. It represents, presumably, the overall training load over the whole period.

I had one significant dip when I was away on holidays in SE Asia last August but other than that I have kept levels up. The two big fatigue peaks are very obvious and flag the 50k ultra and the 80k of Lakes in a Day. There is a natural oscillation in the line, matching my runs and rests, but I been able to, in the past few months, ramp it up and peak about 3 weeks out from the Cape Wrath Ultra.

The importance of rest

Now, I am big fan of rest. 😁 The whole idea behind getting fitter is that it is a process of adaptation. It’s not the running itself that gets you fit, it is your body’s response. We are fortunate enough to be in possession of bodies that are capable of the most astonishing adaptations. Some of those are relative quick, most take days and weeks, and there are some, perhaps around connective tissue for instance, that will take weeks and months.

We all know we need to overload and let the good ol’ adaptation take effect. That means rest and it means doing the load/rest cycle over weeks and months. You can’t train for CWU in two weeks flat.

If there is one thing that motivates me it is the aim of remaining injury free. I’m starting to feel like I have pushed my luck as far as I want to go on that one now. I’ve increased the quantity of my training and there is now just 17 days until we push off. I could go out and do a couple of long back-to-back runs this coming weekend, within two weeks of the start. It’s certainly my last opportunity. How much difference will those runs make? I suspect not a damn lot.

Indeed, I’m fairly certain the Race Director, Shane Ohly, made a comment a little on these lines in one of his excellent videos. They must have a lot of entrants who fall into the DNS/deferred category due to injury. Of course, anyone can be unlucky and I’m very aware there is a little over two weeks to the start — it could be me still. My interpretation was that the pressure of a long long event like CWU drives people to try and put in monster training sessions. The risk of injury is then, inevitably, significant.

Starting to back off now

I feel like I am gambling saying this but I don’t feel I could have reasonably done more training with my life as it is and, so, what I have done will have to suffice. What I am not necessarily convinced about is that lots more training would guarantee success to a much greater degree. I suspect the gains are marginal beyond a certain point.

I do think organisation or ‘personal admin’ as it called in the Army and specificity in training are huge factors in the likelihood of success and I’m trying not to skimp on either of those. Shane Ohly states as much - and Race Directors are as good a source of advice as there is. (More on personal admin in another post.)

It is also possible to see how much my fatigue had climbed by the end of last week. I have quite deliberately had four easy days. Two days with nothing at all and two with my usual gentle hour long outing around Winder. It is going to be imperative that my fatigue levels are the lowest they can be at the start, I’m going to need a full tank. And some.

It is enough? We shall see and as I said last time, don’t panic! 😀