The Monday Morning Blues?

Well if your weekend was anything like mine it involved pain, exhaustion, exhiliration and pushing yourself past personal barriers you never thought were there.

The trouble with pushing your body to the limit like we did on sunday is that your muscles will start to hurt a day or two after the exercise. I didn't know there was a technical term for it until recently but have since found out its called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (or DOMS). What is it? Normally it is the symptom of over exertion. Either lifting too much weight, running too far or using your muscles past the limit of their endurance. That last one is particularly dangerous as you can actually cause far more than just the DOMS to occur.

I and the other guys, don't really have the luxury of using the 10% rule to train to - we'd be there for ever adding 10% on to our cycle each week to get to the distance we'd need. Instead I'm going about it slightly differently. I've drastically altered my diet. I eat a high carb, high protein diet (always keeping the same ratio of 2g of protein to 5g carb). This will allow the muscles to have enough fuel and enough building blocks to adapt to what I am subjecting them to.

Then there is the exercise. Normally through the week we train to about 12 miles. It's better than nothing but not enough. So weekends we do 20+ miles normally, although yesterday was about 47miles by the time I cycled home.

Pushing ourselves that far is bound to cause DOMS so what can you do to reduce the pain? To be honest not a lot. Research has shown that a warm down wont help, that stretching doesn't help after the exercise - but it can reduce swelling by as much as 30%. Massage can help too, it increases the blood flow and therefore the oxygen getting to the muscles making them recover slightly quicker.

Obviously avoiding the DOMS is the better option; for us its never going to happen, we'll be in pain regardless as we have to push hard to be able to complete the cycle in Sweden. For you guys though, a thorough warm up, and using the 10% rule will help to ensure that you don't overdo it, remember gradual changes are best. Don't go out running a 10k run if you haven't ran before.