Running with Regnier

🔦Study Spotlight- You might want to read this!!

What did they find?

Recovery is significantly reduced in the PMP (i.e just before your period, day 28-29) compared to the follicular phases (Day 11-13) and luteal phases (day 21-23)

How did they come to this conclusion?

Athletes did a max strength exercise (baseline)
Repeated sprints (fatiguing exercise)
Repeat max strength exercise (to test recovery)

Athletes who were in their premenstrual phase had the LOWEST⬇️ scores after the sprints - meaning they did NOT recover as well from the fatiguing exercise compared to the luteal and follicular phase

Another finding: Follicular phase showed the GREATEST scores after the sprints, meaning they recovered the best ✅

Note: These differences were significant - meaning it is statistically unlikely these scores happened by chance

🏃🏼‍♀️ How can you apply this to your running?

Here is where the "theory" comes in: These results suggest you should push the harder strength workouts in the follicular phase where your recovery is optimized, and focus on easier, less intense workouts just before your period. Since I would suggest programming recovery weeks the same for strength and running workouts - I would suggest having your recovery week for all your training set as a few days before and a few days after your period

Some limitations to this advice:

▪️This was done on women 20-25
▪️No form of oral contraception
▪️Cycles between 28-30 days in length
▪️Athletes
——
📚 Physical, Biochemical & Neuromuscular Response to Repeated Sprint Exercise in Eumenorrheic Female Handball Players: Effect of Menstrual Cycle Phases

Just finished a week of road trippin in BC and wanted to share some cycling highlights with you!

RBC Grand Fondo Whistler⁠
⁠
This was a beautiful ride starting in Vancouver and riding the Sea-to Sky highway all the way to the town of Whistler (124.22km and 1425m of elevation). This road is extremely dangerous to ride on with a road bike, but during the Fondo, the road is closed so it's actually safe. Absolutely stunning scenery for the majority of the ride - but be prepared, because it's basically up hill the entire way!⁠
⁠
Hurricane Ridge⁠
⁠
We did this stunning ride while staying in Victoria, and took a ferry over to Port Angeles to start the ride. The only catch is the earliest you can get to Port Angeles is 12 noon and the latest ferry back to Victoria is 5:15 - so time is tight for this 33km climb, with 1577m of elevation. You also need to leave yourself a little bit of time to clear customs, since you are crossing the boarder⁠
⁠
Note to riders: bring a jacket and gloves for the descent! It is freezing!! (and your passport)⁠
⁠
Apex in Pentiction⁠
⁠
The last big climb (68km, 1446m elevation) of the week was up the Apex, starting in Pentiction. At this time, we had planned to be in Coeur D'Alene for the Grand Fondo, but with all the Idaho wild fires, we were worried about air quality and decided to stay in BC for the remainder of our trip.⁠
⁠
I found this climb to be the most challenging of the 3 - simply because at the steepest sections of the climb we had a nasty headwind and the end seemed so far away. Just when I thought I wasn't going to make the last 7km of the climb, the road started to flatten out to be more manageable. So if you do it - don't give up! The 1st 4km from the base of Apex Mountain is the worst.⁠
⁠
Again: Bring a jacket and gloves - even if it's a warm day!⁠
⁠
Huge thanks to for the massages these last few weeks. Sitting hunched over in the saddle for 3 x 5+ hour rides would be a lot more painful if I had a tight upper body⁠
⁠
My therapist also suggested "Eagle Pose" arms (google "eagle pose") and then bend forward to help stretch out my shoulders which helped immensely during rest stops on the way up!