It's Monday morning. You can barely lift your head. Your hand smashes the snooze button. You know you are going to be late for work and you don't give a *&@#!
At this point, you don't care about anything because you're pissed off nobody cares that you just rode 120 kilometres as fast as you possibly could from one city to another.
If you thought the morning after your best friend's wedding was bad, you have yet to experience the "race hangover blues."
After an entire season dedicated to training, racing and peaking for one final race, it's common to feel the hangover of the finish. For months your life was dictated by the weather, your training schedule and whenever you found time to fit in another ride. Now that the pressure is off, it can be hard to find the momentum for a return to daily life.
How do you deal with it?
The first step is recognizing the stage you are in. Don't be shocked when you wake up screaming at the cat for "looking at you with those eyes!" Recognize that you will feel a little down-even depressed. Have faith in knowing that it is temporary.
Now you can start to move back to where you want to be: excited and motivated about life and training.
One of the best ways to cure the race hangover blues is to choose another race. This next race should be far enough in advance to allow your body to recover but close enough to get you excited about training again.
Once you have set a new goal, you can relax, celebrate your accomplishments and take a month to recover.
You read that correctly: If you're training hard all season, it's important to give yourself a full month's recovery.
Although we all wish we could be super-human, it's impossible to remain in peak condition for the entire year. Trying to hold onto your racing fitness is a sure way to burn out and even ruin the following season with an injury.
Every good training program should incorporate a focused recovery phase. Most of us find this phase the hardest to follow so I am giving you the six steps to make this year's recovery phase a success.
One: Choose a start date. Usually the day after your peak race is a good date to start.
Two: Set an end date four to six weeks later. Three: Mark both weeks on your calendar. Four: Force yourself to rest, eat well and address any injuries, muscle imbalances or weakness. Do not do any hard or intense training.
Five: Catch up on things you may have put aside, such as spending time with family, home projects, other sports, art or even work.
Six: Try to enjoy this phase as much as all of the others, respecting the importance of rest.
Kristina Bangma is a coach, personal trainer and writer with a love of riding and racing. Email questions to [email protected].
