All runners are acquainted with inflammation. Inflamation is generally a bad thing. As runners, we put ourselves through intense workouts that can raise the level of inflammation ( think about DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness----this is due to inflammation). Inflamation releases all sorts of nasty chemical mediators that can act on all your body systems in a bad way. CRP or C-reactive protein is a chemical marker that we can actually measure that correlates to the magnitude of inflammation. The good news for runners, our bodies do adapt to stress! The more we run, each subsequent hard effort day you will see less CRP elevations as our conditioning continues to improve. However, we have all had those hard run days and the next day you try to exercise for a recovery run and the effort still seems high. Perhaps the CRP is elevated and your body is still in a state of inflammation beyond your comfort zone? What if you could reduce the inflammation quicker? Would you be interested? I am not talking taking NSAIDS to help (that's a topic for another day).
A study in the International Journal of Sports Medicine took a group of triathletes and had them do back to back two high intensity interval sessions (HIIS) on a track (8 x3:00 minutes). These subjects then recovererd in one of two ways 10 hours later. One group did a swim recovery session(SRS) and the other group did a passive recovery (PRS) session ( sat for a day). 24 hours post high intensity workout they did a time to fatigue (TTF) run and also measured their CRP prior to the TTF. The findings showed the the swimming group had a significantly longer TTF(they could run longer before exhaustion) and they also had a decrease in CRP on average of 23% vs. the passive recovery group have +/- CRP of 5%. Interestingly, the athletes didn't report feeling any more recovered with either group before the TTF activity.
Personally, as a running coach and as a runner, I believe that putting a swim day in after your hard effort days is probably magical. I know for me it is helpful. Recovery days are just that, a day to allow the magic of your hard training days to settle in, the body to recover and process the effort and damage/inflamation you have done and make the adaptations that will make you stronger your next outing. Give swimming a try and you be the judge. Look at my other blog post about swim equivalent miles if you are really worried about mileage. I really believe a good swim post high intensity interval sessions is much better than "junk" recovery miles!
Jeff Bangle, DVM prrunningcoach.com
Int J Sports Med. 2010 Jan;31(1):26-30. doi: 10.1055/s-0029-1239498. Epub 2009 Nov 11.
Personally, as a running coach and as a runner, I believe that putting a swim day in after your hard effort days is probably magical. I know for me it is helpful. Recovery days are just that, a day to allow the magic of your hard training days to settle in, the body to recover and process the effort and damage/inflamation you have done and make the adaptations that will make you stronger your next outing. Give swimming a try and you be the judge. Look at my other blog post about swim equivalent miles if you are really worried about mileage. I really believe a good swim post high intensity interval sessions is much better than "junk" recovery miles!
Jeff Bangle, DVM prrunningcoach.com
Int J Sports Med. 2010 Jan;31(1):26-30. doi: 10.1055/s-0029-1239498. Epub 2009 Nov 11.
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