Recovery Post-Kona - The Longest Ever?

This tweet popped up on my feed about three weeks ago and what a welcome sight it was!  

I knew that I would need to take time to recover from Kona ... and three ironmans in one year ... 

But I didn't expect to still be actively managing my fatigue levels into January.  


Throughout October and into November I had some quality recovery time and then December was the month to get back into training properly in preparation for Taupo.  But it was a long, slow and sometimes frustrating road.  I'd have a good day and hit my targets but then feel rubbish for the rest of the week.  Things just weren't happening consistently but I knew I had to listen to my body and be patient.  I had Coach Dave staying calm and telling me not to worry. "There's still plenty of time, just listen to your body and take it easy if you need to", he would wisely say, but as the weeks ticked closer to the new year St Pete started getting very adept at helping me negotiate and reassess most training sets in order to maximise the key workouts and minimise the burnout.

So to see the tweet from our Ironman World Champion, just a week after I had done my epic 100 x 100 swim challenge (which of course wiped me out for the rest of the week!), was actually a real relief and I could definitely relate to it.  It put my own fatigue levels back into perspective and I knew if an athlete of Mirinda's calibre was also having to negotiate the long road back to fitness then maybe I wasn't doing so badly.