431: The Science of Recovery: Episode 1

Most runners love the feeling of a good workout — that endorphin rush, the sweat, the sense of accomplishment. But here’s the truth: your body doesn’t get stronger during the run. It gets stronger during recovery.

In this episode, Angie and Kevin kick off a brand-new series on the science of recovery — because if you want to make progress, stay healthy, and actually feel good while running, recovery isn’t optional. It’s essential.

They break down what recovery really means, why it’s often overlooked, and how you can start getting it right. You’ll learn:

🏃‍♀️ How training stress (and life stress) affect your recovery — especially for women over 40
😴 Why quality sleep, protein, and proper fueling matter more than you think
⚖️ The difference between under-recovering and being “just tired”
💪 Simple, practical ways to support recovery — from active recovery runs to mindset shifts

If you’ve ever wondered why you’re feeling more fatigued, sore, or unmotivated despite consistent training, this episode is your guide to finding balance, rebuilding stronger, and running for the long haul.

🎧 Tune in to learn how to make recovery your secret weapon for performance, progress, and longevity in running — and life.

00:28 The Importance of Recovery in Training

05:26 The Science of Stress and Adaptation

09:10 Understanding the Stress and Adaptation Cycle

15:12 The Role of Recovery in Training

15:26 The Exhaustion Phase and Its Implications

19:45 Balancing Stress and Recovery

27:15 Signs of Stress and Under-Recovery

30:34 The Critical Role of Sleep in Recovery

32:34 The Importance of Sleep for Muscle Recovery

33:53 Strategies for Improving Sleep Quality

37:14 The Role of Hormones in Recovery for Women Over 40

39:34 Optimizing Protein Intake for Muscle Recovery

43:03 Recognizing Signs of Under-Recovery

47:07 Effective Recovery Strategies

Join the 30 Day Running Reset and get a plan that will help you build a strong and injury-proof body by combining running and strength training in a way that actually works for runners like you.

Gain access to my new secret podcast, Unbreakable: The Runner's Guide To Injury-Proofing Your Body After 40. Click here: https://www.realliferunners.com/secret

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

Transcript

Angie: 0:00

This is the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 431. So often we think about and talk about the miles, the workouts, the training plans, but the real magic of improvement doesn't happen when you're running. It actually happens. So if you've ever felt like you're doing things right, but you're still not improving, or that your body feels more tired now than it used to, even with the same training, you are not broken, you're just under recovered, most likely. And so today we're actually starting a series all about recovery, about the science of recovery and adaptation to help you make those miles more effective. Because if you're not recovering from the miles. You're not gaining the benefits of all of that hard work, and we want to change that for you, so stay tuned. What's up runners? Welcome to the show. Today we are starting a new series. Those of you that have been listening for a little bit the last month or so, know that we just wrapped up our series on core values, which is a fun one for us to record.

Kevin: 1:26

Yeah, now we're bringing on more series. It's just, it's a series. Spectacular. I like

Angie: 1:29

it. I like it. because for us, it's one of those things running a podcast for eight years, which, we just celebrated our eight year podcast anniversary, which was super cool. And thank you so much to all of you that participated in our giveaway and our podcast celebration. Everyone that left us a review or shared the podcast with a friend or on social media, we really appreciate it. Thank you so much for helping us to get the podcast out to more listeners because our goal. With this free podcast is to reach as many people as possible and help as many runners as possible with good scientific based, evidence-based information for free. And we need your help. So the, even though our sweepstakes are giveaway is over, the sharing of the podcast and the promoting of the pod podcast never stops. So if you haven't yet, we would love for you to leave us a review. On Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. Spotify, you can only leave a star review, which is great. If you can leave us a rating on there. And on Spotify you can actually comment on individual episodes. So if there was a specific episode that really spoke to you, it would be awesome if you could leave a comment under that episode as well. and if you wanna leave us a review, apple Podcasts really uses those reviews to help push the podcast out so that more people can find it. So anything that you can do to help us would. Would be so appreciated, and thank you so much for all of you that have already done that. After eight years of podcasting, there's not many topics that we haven't covered, right? So it's one of those things that every week on the podcast, we think about, okay, what do we want to talk about this week? What's new in the running world? What can. What is, what are we seeing with our clients and the people inside the Real Life Runners coaching program and inside the team? what are people struggling with? What are we seeing in social media and the world of running and what, how can we take those things and. Put it into an episode that is going to be helpful for people. And so that's where this idea of the series came from because it helps to direct our focus also in a way. And it makes us, makes it a little bit easier for us to figure out what we're gonna be talking about every week.

Kevin: 3:41

it's like making dinner, you know it. You have to make dinner every single night and it's always Hey, what do you have wanna have for dinner tonight? And when the world

Angie: 3:47

Tuesdays are tacos,

Kevin: 3:48

yeah. But when the world is everything you could possibly eat, it gets. Sometimes tricky. And when it's we have this protein option in the fridge, at least it narrows it down a little bit. Yeah. So we've got a, we've got series for

Angie: 3:59

you. How

Kevin: 3:59

are we cooking chicken tonight? So how are we cooking? Yeah, we've got ground meat. We're gonna do something like that tonight. Yeah,

Angie: 4:03

exactly. So this series that I, decided on. Creating for you guys is all about the science of recovery, and throughout the course of this series, we're gonna go through lots of different, we're gonna talk about recovery, the physiology and the science behind it. What's actually happening in your body, why recovery is so important. And we're also going to go into all of the different recovery tools that are out there, like foam rolling and ice baths and saunas. All the different things that you might be hearing about compression sleeves and compression boots and all these things, and help you understand the science behind them so that you can make the best decision for you of, is this something that I want to spend my time or my money? Doing and implementing in my training?

Kevin: 4:47

Yes. is it worthwhile recovery tools?'cause there are a lot of recovery tools, but some of them are a little bit more complicated than others. So is it worth your time and effort?

Angie: 4:55

not just complicated, but effective also, like some of the things out there sound cool and look fancy. What kind of benefit are they actually giving you? And is that benefit an actual physiological benefit or is it more of a placebo effect? Is it more of a mental thing, which isn't bad either? And I'm gonna definitely point that out as we go through this series because if you get a benefit, you get a benefit. And does it really matter if there's a physiological benefit or if it's just a placebo effect? I would argue no, because if you're feeling better using it, then. Essentially that's a good thing.

Kevin: 5:30

A hundred percent. And as we go through this episode, we'll cover why that is actually a thing, because recovery is not always just a physical issue.

Angie: 5:37

So let's first start by just getting into the science of stress and adaptation. what is actually happening in the body when we work out? why do we even work out in the first place? because. What you need to understand. The main point that you want to know is that training is a stress on the body. Training is actually breaking your body down and recovery is where the adaptation happens. And if you've been listening for a while, you've heard us say that plenty and plenty of times. So there's actually a cycle. That the body goes through. And this was a concept that was first introduced back in like 1950, called that general adaptation syndrome. And there's three stages that your body goes through with any stress, including training. So the first stage is the stress response. So this happens during. And immediately after training, and when you train, you are activating your sympathetic nervous system. That is your fight or flight response. So when your sympathetic nervous system is activated, that increases things like your heart rate, your breathing rate, your adrenaline, cortisol. All of these things increase and rise because think about it, when you're running, your heart needs to work harder in order to pump the blood out to your working muscle. So if you want to run longer. Run faster. Your heart has to be effective with that, and the sympathetic response helps with that. During training your muscles also experience what are called micro tears. So this is when, especially during strength training, like this happens during running as well. Not as much, especially if you're taking it nice and easy and doing a re rest or an easy recovery run. But on your harder training sessions and during your strength training sessions, what you're doing is actually creating little micro tears in the muscle because then during recovery, when those micro tears. Repair themselves. That muscle actually gets stronger,

Kevin: 7:38

right? And it happens during running as long as you're running at a point that pushes yourself. The same way that when you're lifting you, like I could go in there and do various lifting exercises that I'm comfortable and familiar with and with really low weight, right? And I would feel no soreness from it. It's that soreness that suggests that you pushed your body and created these micro tears. You push too far, you get an injury, but you push a little bit, you get some soreness. That soreness is. Often connected to these little micro tears in running. You get it a lot with if you're pushing hard or if you're pushing downhill, because that, that definitely puts some stress on the body, right?

Angie: 8:12

But. A quick note about soreness is that you don't have to be sore in order to have an effective workout. That is one of those myths out there in the running and workout world is that a workout is not effective unless I'm sore afterwards, and that's a bunch of baloney. You don't have to be sore and you can still have a very effective workout.

Kevin: 8:33

Yeah, no ex excellent point there.'cause otherwise it's just, I gotta be sore all the time and that is. Definitely not a good way to, to progress yourself

Angie: 8:40

or to live your life. let's be real. Do we really wanna be sore all the time? So during this stress phase, your muscles are experiencing these micro tears. You're also depleting your glycogen store. So glycogen is the stored form of glucose. It is stored in your muscles and in your liver, and that is helping to give your body energy. And during training sessions, especially harder training sessions, that glycogen gets depleted. You empty out your glycogens. stores and fatigue sets in, right? If once you start to run out of energy, run out of fuel, just like a car that runs outta gas, you start to get tired. And during this phase, during this stress phase, you are actually breaking down tissue. You are not getting stronger yet. And this is what so many people don't understand. They think that the strength training or the hard workouts are what are making them stronger and. In a way, yes, that is the first step. Like you have to go through this stress step, this stress phase in order to make your muscles stronger, but that's not actually where the strength is built.

Kevin: 9:45

Yeah, and it's really important that you highlight all the different things, these micro tears, the loss of fuel and this general sense of fatigue because all of these things then need to be addressed in the next phase where you actually start making some adaptations to it. So you have to put a stress onto your body. It doesn't have to be an overwhelming stress. It simply has to be a stress on the body. And then you slide into the adaptation window where your body actually begins to repair itself, where it actually rebuilds. And ideally, as long as you've stressed appropriately and you're going through the recovery that we're gonna highlight here, then you rebuild and you rebuild stronger than you were originally. That is essentially the overall. Point of training is to stress your body so that it will build back stronger if you just stress and build back exactly where you got, there's never progress. So the whole point of training is to be able to put a stress onto your body so that it decides it has to come back even stronger than it started.

Angie: 10:42

Exactly. And this is where. What you do after training really matters because after you've given your body this stress that has broken the body down a bit, now you have to go into this adaptation phase where your protein synthesis increases, so your body starts to make new proteins from the amino acids that are floating around in your body. Those glycogen stores replenish. How do they do that? By you eating right. That is one of the things like your body doesn't cannot just replenish your glycogen stores. You have to fuel, put food into your body in order to replenish those glycogen stores, and then your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. So remember, the stress response is activating your sympathetic nervous system that. Fight or flight. The parasympathetic nervous system is your rest and digest mode. And I like to call it like rest and repair people, like rest and digest because it rhymes and that's actually what is happening. But as a runner, as an athlete, I like to think of it as rest and repair as well.

Kevin: 11:45

Yeah, the digest is helpful because it does point out that you actually need to put nutrients into your body and you have to do it for a good chunk of time. so many people focus on what happens in like the. 20 to 45 minutes right afterwards, but they're coming out with more studies that if you've pushed your body for like an extended period of time that you need to keep refueling for days and days afterwards. Yeah. Yep. Like I, the study came off of like an ultra marathon thing. But they were like, you're still, it's not that you're in a calorie deficit, but you're base baseline metabolism. Is still higher than normal a week later after a super difficult workout,

Angie: 12:21

right? And so if you give your body the time and the nutrients that it needs during this adaptation window, your body adapts to handle more stress next time. That's what we talk about when we say that you're getting strong, you, your body builds back stronger than it was before. So this is where you're. Actually getting stronger, faster, more efficient is during this adaptation window. And I wanna just address what Kevin just brought up too, because people talk a lot about this adaptation window and they wanna tell you that you have to get something in within 30 to 60 minutes after a workout in order to optimize your adaptation window. And there's been research back and forth on this throughout the years, over decades I should say. But. Ultimately, there's not some magic window of recovery. With that being said, the sooner you get fuel back into your body, the quicker your body can switch over from breakdown mode and from sympathetic activation. Into parasympathetic and repair mode. So I do think it's a good idea for you to get food in as quickly as you can, as quickly as you can tolerate. Especially, I know there's a lot of people that don't like to eat right away'cause they don't have the appetite, but sometimes. It's necessary that even if you're not hungry, it's still a really good idea to refuel. Get something into your body soon after exercise so that you can help your body and your nervous system just switch modes out of that sympathetic fight or flight. And. Into the parasympathetic rest and digest.

Kevin: 13:56

So one of the reasons why it is often difficult for people to eat right after they work out is because their body temperature is elevated and an elevated core temperature reduces your desire to eat it. Like it lowers all of the desires to eat. So if you can do something that cools you down, if you're like, all right, I can't take in whatever this fuel is, if you can just. Take in a small amount of ice water and you could put calories in that just right off the bat, drinking is usually the easiest way to get in calories. Yeah. But if you take in some cold liquid, even if it doesn't lower your core temperature a lot, just whatever helps you start feeling like you're cooler. Yeah. Will then make hunger. easily more easily accessible.

Angie: 14:33

More easily accessible. Yeah. So that could include jumping in the shower too, like taking a lukewarm or colder shower. You don't wanna jump into a freezing cold thing'cause you don't wanna shock the system like that. But here in Florida over the summer, it is lovely after a run to. Just literally jump into the pool after a run because we are so hot. Core body temperatures are very much elevated when you jump in the pool and it helps to bring your core temperature down, I should say my core temperature down. Like it makes me feel so much better so quickly too, just from that change in core body temperature. So I love that you gave them that tip. That is really how we want our systems to be operating. We stress and then we give ourselves the proper add, like proper fuel and nutrients and rest and recovery so that our body actually adapts and gets stronger. Now there's a third phase called the exhaustion phase, and this happens when you skip recovery or when you skimp on recovery. It's not just skipping recovery, but when you are under recovery, not giving your body enough recovery. So this happens when your stress. Continues without enough rest to actually allow your body to adapt to what it just went through. And when this happens, the things that are like going on in your body, your cortisol levels stay elevated. That is your stress hormone. This leads to, this can lead to an imbalance in other hormones as well, because it's not just cortisol that is problematic. Cortisol is not. A problematic hormone in and of itself. We need cortisol. Cortisol is released during the stress phase. We want that stress. Cortisol is a very good thing. However, if it stays elevated for a long period of time, chronically elevated cortisol levels, that's where it becomes more problematic because. Everything in your body works together. So your cortisol levels affect other hormones in your body as well, like your hunger hormones, which are ghrelin and leptin. Leptin is like your satiety hormone, so those are affected by cortisol. It affects lots of different hormones and processes in your body. And it can actually cause it a hormonal imbalance and also weaken your immune system because your body is just in this constant state of fight or flight. So this shows up as fatigue, poor sleep, irritability, injury, which obviously none of us wants or plateau, right? Just you not making progress and you're just feeling tired and sore all the time. And the thing that I really want you to understand is that this is so prominent, especially for women, People over 40, but especially women over 40, because of the hormonal changes that we are going through in perimenopause and menopause, it can, this phase can hit us faster because when we have less estrogen on board, then. All of this kind of takes longer just to sum it up and make it pretty simple. Estrogen helps our body recover quicker, and so when we're losing estrogen, it takes longer for our body to adapt and recover because estrogen is a more anti-inflammatory hormone. It can help with repair and recovery, and when we don't have it. It's just gonna, it's more, it makes our recovery choices even more important, I think is really the way we wanna think about it.

Kevin: 17:43

Yeah. So the exhaustion phase is interesting'cause you pointed out that it's not just skipping a recovery but skimp also. It's not that there's a fixed set of this is the workout and then this is the recovery. And that's exactly what it is. It's that depending on how stressful it was, you need to have an appropriate amount of recovery for you. And so the imbalance comes from. Too much stress and maintaining your same level of recovery or. reducing your stress, but then also over reducing your recovery. oh, I didn't really have much of a workout today, so I don't really need to worry about recovery. Yeah. there's always a time to be taking care of the recovery side of the equation, even if the stress side is relatively low, and if you ramp up the stress side, you have to drastically ramp up the recovery site also, which I think is where a lot of people get caught up on this one is they're like, oh, I'm recovering more. But it's okay, but you really increase. The stress sites, you have to drastically increase the recovery as well.

Angie: 18:37

Yeah, and this is one of the reasons why I haven't run a marathon yet, because I understand like there's the training, but there's also the recovery and everything else that goes into training for a marathon. And I know with the life that I currently have with our girls and all the other things that I have to deal with as a mom, as a business owner, as a wife, I just don't have a lot of time for. Me to just lay around and recover. And so that's one of the biggest reasons I haven't done it because, and this is one of the, I think one of the biggest things that not a lot of people take into consideration. They think about, oh, where can I fit my training in? But they neglect to figure out when they can actually fit in their recovery time and that. Is actually, I don't wanna say even more important, but in a way it is, right? Because once you get that training in, if you're not recovered, you're going to get injured. And if you're injured, then you're not gonna be able to continue training and you're not gonna be able to run the marathon or the ultra marathon or whatever it is that you want to accomplish. And the other thing that's really important to point out here is that stress from other areas of your life also play a big role in how your body adapts to your training. Because stress is stress. I like to think of it as a bucket. We have, everyone has one stress bucket because you have one body and one brain that is handling all of the stuff that's coming at you every single day. So we have physical stressors in our life. We have emotional, we have psychological, we have financial stress, we have all sorts of family stress going on. Friends, there's so many different. Things that can cause stress in our lives and all of that stress is going into the same bucket. And so if your recovery is not matching that stress, that is the reason that you're not making the progress that you want.

Kevin: 20:25

You've got a wonderful phrase here in the outline that says you can't out train a stressed out body. And this is my biggest issue with a whole lot of online training plans is they, are most of them quality training plans on there are. Effective. They're good training plans. Yeah. The problem is that you can't just follow a training plan and then ignore the recovery portion of the rest of it. Like I checked all the boxes, I did all of the workouts on the training plan, unless the training plan has specific recovery metrics on there, also, you can't just be like, I did the training plan, so I'm going to get the results. Yeah. The best training plan isn't gonna work if it over stresses you because you're under recovered for it.

Angie: 21:05

Yeah, and I think that this is one thing that. People often don't understand is that there are some weeks. Some days where it is actually better for you to skip a workout than to do the workout on your plan because your body would benefit more from the additional recovery than it would just adding on an additional workout. And that's really where you know, coaches and having an adaptive training plan, an adaptable training plan. Is so important. That's what you need. Because stuff comes up, there's all sorts of things that can happen. I know that like our life recently has just been all sorts of craziness and there's been a lot of stress outside of, just normal. I shouldn't say normal, but abnormal life stress that has been added on. So one of the things that we have been dealing with the past, like month and a half. I think I've already talked about this on the podcast, but we lost our dog, September 1st. And it was real, a really traumatic experience. She unfortunately was hit by a car and so it was very sudden, very traumatic. And we've been grieving and just going through all sorts of things with that. And I've also been feeling like I have a void that I needed to fill. And so the exciting announcement, I actually just posted it tonight on Instagram. Made it Instagram official, Kev, oh, not Facebook official yet, but, we just got a new dog and he is wonderful so far. He's, we've had him a couple days now and, however, there's a, an adaptation phase here. there's a, there's definitely

Kevin: 22:42

a stress phase involved.

Angie: 22:43

There's a stress phase and there's an adaptation phase, right? There's going to be, it's going to take time for him to adapt to us, for us to adapt to him and. That first night that he was here and we're like, I don't know what his schedule's and he woke up at five o'clock in the morning and had to go to the bathroom. And so there are things that I'm going to have to do that I'm not really sure of, and that I don't really have control over at this point. And so Tuesday mornings are normally my speed work session. I meet with my friends on Tuesdays and. Today I decided not to do that because I didn't know how his night was gonna go. I didn't know if I was gonna be up with him trying to help him, get him settled and help him adapt to what's going on. And so I chose not to do speed work with my friends this morning. Part of that was because of the lack of sleep that I had the day before. And the other part of it was knowing that I could get my run in later in the day, and it was probably going to be a better choice for me to get some sleep in order to allow my body to recover from. The running and the strength training that I've been doing and the traveling and all the other things that I've been doing recently as well because all of those things go into my stress bucket and play a role.

Kevin: 23:52

Yes, there's a lot of things go that go into the stress bucket.

Angie: 23:54

and this is the other thing too, is positive things can go into your stress bucket, right? there's not, stress is not just negative. There are very positive things and positive changes in your life that still cause stress, and I think that's important for us to recognize also.

Kevin: 24:09

anything that's a change, yeah. Is inherently stressful. Whether it's a positive change or negative, anything that creates change, your body's I'm not sure what's going on. And that naturally creates some sort of stressful thing. Yeah. Which then leads to recovery. And recovery takes a whole lot of different. Angles. The recovery that most people think of is, I've gotta make sure that my body feels better. People are worried about the muscular system recovering. We're dealing with those micro tears. We were talking about replenishing our glycogen stores. But recovery goes far beyond the muscular system, and that's why. The recovery is much more complicated than, oh, I'll have something to eat and I'll just take a rest day or have an easy day, and then I'll be all better. That's not necessarily it because you also have to deal with your nervous system and your endocrine system. You've got multiple things that have to be taken care of and just. Having a snack is not going to necessarily fix everything. You've got your nervous system. You've gotta actually flip it from your sympathetic go, go into parasympathetic recovery mode. You've gotta do something that flips that switch so that your body knows, alright. I'm actually into recovery mode because then that helps take care of the endocrine system that is dealing with all sorts of hormones going all over the place and helps actually regulate the rise and fall of various hormones that help your body say, alright, we're not in fight or fight mode, we are in recovery mode. Let's get the hormones aligned to have actually allow our body to recover. Y

Angie: 25:40

Yes, agreed. And all of that. A good start is having a snack. I know that you said it, it's not just about having a snack, which is true, but I feel like you just made it sound very ominous in a way. But Kevin's totally right, there are multiple systems that need to recover and, but that doesn't mean that you have to do a million things to recover, and that's really what this series is going to help you filter out as well, because. Having a snack is going to help your muscular system, your nervous system, and your endocrine system, getting some rest, going to bed early. Getting your sleep is going to help all three of these systems. We just have to think about it. We have to be aware of this because recovery isn't just about the muscles. It's about bringing your whole system back into balance. Your body likes to be in a state of homeostasis. Who remembers Biology 1 0 1 from high school? Everybody knows the word homeo. Basis. That is that sense of balance in your body. And so many of us are living our lives completely outta balance because we are so stressed all the time with all the things that are going on that it's really hard for our bodies to recover. And so we have to be much more intentional about giving our body the recovery that it needs because it is our muscular system, our nervous system, and our endocrine system. So some signs that these systems are still stressed. Number one would be an elevated resting heart rate. So those of you that wear a watch or a ring, I know I like to look at what my resting heart rate is, overnight. So if your resting heart rate is elevated higher than it normally is, or if you see a drop in your HRV. So if you have a fancier watch and you can measure your HRV, if you notice your HRV is. Decreasing. That's also a sign that your body is still stressed out. Other things, if that don't need any sort of fancy equipment, if you're noticing that you're just more moody or having more mood swings or irritability, that can obvi obviously be complicated by the hormonal changes that we women are going through in perimenopause and menopause because those hormone changes. Also can lead to these types of system or symptoms. And that is why that, if you are over training and under recovering, you're putting your system even more out of balance. Because when you are more stressed out, the, your estrogen, your progesterone, the stuff that you still do have on board, if you are, pre menopause. Those are even more dysregulated because of the changes or the elevated, the chronic elevation of your cortisol levels. if you're noticing that you are having heavy legs despite only running easier, maybe you haven't done a workout in a while, but your legs just feel heavy on all your runs. Or you're having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or you're just noticing an overall lack of motivation and you just don't feel like going out for your runs. All of those could be signs that you're not getting enough recovery and your body's still stressed.

Kevin: 28:29

Alright, so I have a couple points on this. One. The combination of taking care of all of your systems while making sure that sometimes just having a snack is beneficial. If you finish your workout and you have a snack, will you start just mindlessly scrolling through, essentially doom scrolling, mind scrolling some. Mindlessly scrolling is, depending on what your feed is, might actually help you just calm down. Yeah. But if you've got a terrible feed coming at you, it is not necessarily going to help you.

Angie: 28:56

Like the news.

Kevin: 28:57

Yeah. being like, oh, during my recovery window I'll have a snack and check all of the latest headlines.

Angie: 29:03

Or if the stock market's having a bad day.

Kevin: 29:05

Yeah. These are not things that are going to help you move out of flight or fight. So you think about things that would actually help you try to fall asleep, news headlines, scrolling through your Instagram feed, not necessarily things that will help you drift off to sleep. They're also not great recovery tools. And the other one that I wanted to cover is you mentioned the elevated resting heart rate or HRV. Sometimes after you do something. Particularly difficult. Your resting heart rate will actually drop the next day and you're like, oh, look at me. I'm totally gaining from that hard workout. And then the day after it pops back up and you get a spike off of this. So sometimes you get this preliminary dip in your resting heart rate, like resting heart rate dips and HRV rises, and it seems like you've gained this massive benefit. But it's just, it's hiding the next day where it's gonna reverse, and then you're gonna feel like you're overtrained. So sometimes those numbers can lie to you. If you know you just did a really hard workout and you see a dip in your resting heart rate the next day, you're probably really in need of some extra recovery.

Angie: 30:07

Yeah. So what can we do to start. Recovering better. The number one thing that everyone needs to do is sleep. You cannot train hard if you are not getting enough sleep, especially if you are over the age of 30 or 40 or 50 or 60, you might have been able to get away with it in your twenties. Or in your teens, but after the age of 30, 35, your body just doesn't recover the way that it used to. And obviously if you are listening to this podcast and you have a newborn or small kids, you understand how you feel with a lack of sleep. And I know that you might be listening to this right now thinking, how the heck am I supposed to get more sleep? I am not here to tell you all the ways, but I am here to tell you how important it is, okay? Because 70 to 90% of your growth hormone is released during deep sleep. During sleep. So if you are not getting enough sleep, and if you are not getting quality sleep, then you are missing out on a huge piece of your recovery. Sleep is critical. It is one of these factors that. Pretty much no matter what study you I have ever read that I am aware of, I don't know if there's any out there that go against this, but any study that I'm aware of that has studied sleep, regardless of what the variable is like, whatever the outcome they're looking at, whether they're looking at performance, they're looking at overall health, or they're looking at blood sugar, they're looking at so many different variables. Basically all of them show that more sleep improves that thing, that outcome and less sleep, not enough sleep, decreases that variable. So there's a, there's obviously a window and, or a range I should say. Of what is enough and what is adequate and what is too. There's no such thing as too much sleep. Let's be real.

Kevin: 32:03

Yeah. But there's a point of diminishing returns. Yes, exactly. There's a point where it's if you're sleeping 10 hours, do you really, are you getting anything extra from sleep 12? Are you getting an additional

Angie: 32:10

benefit? exactly. But sleep helps to drive mu muscle repair. That is when your muscles actually. Repair and rebuild and get stronger. That is when your glycogen starts to restore itself. And of course, your brain shuts off during sleep so you mentally recover. Your nervous system can recover, and when you are chronically sleep de deprived, if you're not getting enough sleep, this is definitely going to lead to slower adaptation to your training and a higher injury risk.

Kevin: 32:41

So maybe you're lucky like me, or at least I like to sometimes think that my watch is not just making stuff up when it talks about my sleep. If I've ever had a poor night's sleep, the next time I, the next night, I almost immediately just dip straight into deep sleep. And it makes sense because it's the deep sleep where your body releases. The growth hormone and you get some of these best benefits. So if I'm ever really get a bad night's sleep or really get a very short night's sleep the next night when I fall asleep, it is just, I'm immediately basically comatose. It doesn't really matter what's happening. I am immediately straight into deep sleep because my body knows that it needs it. And so that's where it goes.

Angie: 33:18

And you're very lucky in that re regard, like when I, if my watch is accurate. I feel like it's gotten a little bit better maybe, but in general, I don't have as much deep sleep as you. I have a lot of REM sleep, and so I think that I am lacking in that I could probably try some different strategies to improve my deep sleep, but what you want to understand is that your bed is your recovery window. That is where you recover. You can't hack your way out of. For sleep. This is the number one thing that you need to work on. If you are under recovering, you need to make more time for sleep. You should be getting seven to nine hours of sleep per night, and if you are a woman over 40, if you are in perimenopause or post menopause, there's research that is starting to show that we need even more. We need more like eight to 10 hours of sleep every night, especially if you are an active woman that needs muscle repair. One of the things that's really helpful here, and this is a really good thing that all of us can be doing, is to have a consistent bedtime and wake time, regardless of whether it's a weekday or a weekend. And I know that's tough for a lot of people. There's a lot of people that are pretty good with bedtimes and wake times during the week because they've gotta go to work, or they have more of a routine and a schedule, and then the weekend comes and who knows? What their schedule looks like. But giving your body a consistent bedtime and wake time does so many good things, not only for your sleep quantity,'cause you obviously know how much sleep you're going to get if you have a consistent bedtime wake time, but also for your sleep quality because your. Body starts to know, and your body starts to expect, okay, we're getting close to bedtime. It's time for me to start winding down, and it's going to be easier for your body to then shift into deep sleep mode once you actually do go to bed.

Kevin: 35:01

Yeah. I feel like as we continue this series, maybe some different ideas of how to improve sleep quality could show up, but just real quick, a fewer screens and cooler temperatures and a nice dark room. These are some big ones. like a protein snack before you go to bed to make sure that you're not hungry at all. Because trying to go to bed at hungry is, is, I just heard a podcast the other day that doctor suggested that trying to go to bed hungry is the worst way that you could go to bed. I feel like hot with all the lights on has gotta be, Put in a fighting chance to be a terrible way to go to sleep. but, cool the room down. Make it dark and make sure that you're not hungry is some keys.

Angie: 35:33

Yeah. And limiting the screen time. I wanna point that out. Again, I know you just said it, but I think that's one of the things that a lot of us have gotten into the habit of, and I know that's one thing that has drastically improved my sleep. would you say the same for you? Like us taking phones out of the bedroom has. Drastically improved my sleep. I know that.

Kevin: 35:51

when we had a great schedule and we could both read for 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes before we went to bed, that was some of the best sleep that I had. Yeah, we don't have that range right now.

Angie: 35:58

What do you mean? We don't have that range?

Kevin: 36:00

right now, the sleep pattern that I'm on does not include being able to read for 10 minutes before I go to bed.

Angie: 36:04

maybe we need to change that, but yeah. You've been busy with grading. Did not get enough sleep last night for sure. but limiting screens before bed, I would definitely invite you to take your phones outta your bedroom, take the TVs outta your bedroom, make your bedroom a place for sleep and rest and relaxation and connection with your partner. that is what a bedroom. I like, I shouldn't say sh, I don't wanna say should be,'cause I don't like using the word should, but that's what

Kevin: 36:27

it should be, I think.

Angie: 36:29

I think that's really the best way to do it. okay, so sleep. That there's, that is the number one thing that I want you to take away from this episode is how important your sleep is for recovery. Now let's talk a little bit about your recovery and your hormones, especially if you're a runner over 40. So if you are a woman, you have estrogen in your body, and during perimenopause we start to lose estrogen. Our estrogen starts to decline, and estrogen helps to support all sorts of things in recovery in our body, like collagen repair, blood flow, energy metabolism. So as we lose estrogen. Our recovery slows down. Estrogen also has a regulatory effect on cortisol. It helps keep our cortisol levels in check, and so as we lose estrogen, cortisol can stay more elevated longer after training or stress, and without the proper fueling, bringing that nutrition back in. Women can easily deep dip into low energy availability, meaning that your body doesn't have the energy that it needs, and that can lead to hormone dysregulation. It can lead to things like stress fractures, increased injury risk, loss of period, which obviously if you're in perimenopause or post menopause, you're already on your way there, but. It's important for you to understand that your body's not falling apart. Your physiology is just changing. Your hormones are changing, and that's going to change the way that your body recovers. So you have to be much more intentional with your recovery strategy. It's nothing you can't handle. It's nothing that is so terrible. It's just okay, your choices matter more. Now. We just have to be more intentional with these choices.

Kevin: 38:10

You essentially are taking the bumpers off of outta the lanes when you're bowling, right? there's gutters and you could slide off the lane when we were younger it was a lot easier to live a little bit more on the, on the edges. You could get away with reduced recovery and be like, ah, I'll just carry that reduced recovery into the next day. I'll recover in a couple of days. Like you could stack workouts closer together. You could get away with not having a good dinner the night before and still get up and workout the next day. It's just that you have to pay attention. Yeah, a little bit more is really the key.

Angie: 38:41

We have less wiggle room. Yes. That's really what it is, right? Like we just have less wiggle room and our choices affect us more than they used to. We used to have more of a buffer and essentially when we lose estrogen, we lose our buffer and that's really what is going on. Things that you need to do. Number one is to eat enough protein. If you want your muscles to recover, you have to provide the necessary building blocks for muscle and that. Is protein. So you should be aiming for about one gram per pound of your ideal body weight on a daily basis. So if that seems like, holy crap, that is way too much. Like my ideal body weight is 130 pounds. That sounds so that would be 130 grams of protein. That sounds like way too much protein if that's, what's coming to your head right now. Start with a hundred grams or start with. More than what you're currently eating.

Kevin: 39:32

Yes. I was about to say that if you're currently, you go through and you check what you take in during the day. If you're at 50 and Angie just suggested that your ideal is a hundred and something 30, 130, like whatever the number is, move your 50 to 70, move it to 80. Don't move it to 130. don't two and a half times it. That's going to feel overwhelming to you. Yeah. But find a way to increase it. Yeah. That's the key.

Angie: 39:57

So make your first goal to simply increase your protein, make your second goal to consistently get a hundred grams of protein a day or more, right? Like a hundred grams of protein. I think that there's a lot of sources out there that say one gram per pound of ideal body weight, and that's a great thing to shoot for. I also think there's a lot of people that have a hard time with that, and so I think that if you can get in a minimum of a hundred grams of protein per day, you're doing pretty well. And if you get to a hundred, it's going to be easier for you to get to 120 or 130 because you're gonna understand, oh, okay, I just need to have another half a cup of cottage cheese, or I just need to have. This I can, oh, that's easy enough to throw in like another ounce of chicken or something like that.

Kevin: 40:39

Or more cottage cheese or at a mame or cottage

Angie: 40:42

cheese or fried cottage cheese or whipped cottage cheese. Or cottage cheese pizza.

Kevin: 40:49

You threw me with fried cottage cheese. Is that a thing?

Angie: 40:52

I'm sure it is. It's gotta be, I think, actually, I thought. It's baked cottage cheese. Actually, I'm, I think I have seen somebody fry it. Baked

Kevin: 40:59

cottage cheese. Yeah,

Angie: 41:00

like people make cottage cheese chips. Like I see all these recipes now. No veto.

Kevin: 41:04

No, we're not even gonna try that. No,

Angie: 41:05

I will. I will at some point. God, we'll let you know. Okay, so protein, all right, you definitely need some more. You also want to refuel your body with carbohydrates after your run or after your training sessions. Because that's going to help refill your glycogen stores, and it's also going to help lower your cortisol levels because you're refueling your body, and that helps to shift your body out of your sympathetic and into parasympathetic nervous system.

Kevin: 41:32

All right. You also, and this one, hits me strong. You wanna make sure you space your hard efforts with at least 48 hours between any high intensity sessions. That is high intensity for you. Whatever feels like it is a particularly difficult workout, you're gonna need some gap between that one and the next time you go particularly difficult. So if you are pushing speed on one day and then stressing yourself by lifting particularly heavy the next day, the day after that being like, it's been four, eight hours since I ran really fast. Yes, you are correct, but it has not necessarily been 48 hours since you pushed yourself to a high level. So you gotta make sure that you actually space out the intense stresses that will help your recovery.

Angie: 42:15

Absolutely. All right, so let's jump into a little summary'cause we've covered a lot of things on this episode. So how to, how do you recognize whether or not you are under recovered? So some red flags that you wanna look at. If you have fatigue, that doesn't resolve with rest, right? if you are waking up every day tired or exhausted for some of you, and you're just feeling tired all the time. That can be a sign that you are not recovered if you're having mood changes or anxiety or depressive types of symptoms that can be under recovery. And this is where it gets a little tricky, right? Because there's a lot of things. Perimenopause also has these symptoms. Pretty much everything that I'm about to tell you is also a symptom of perimenopause. Again, these are not separate things. They are all connected because perimenopause is a stress on the body. Perimenopause messes with your hormones and your stress levels and your stress hormones. So it really is, these are all signs of your body being overstressed, and that's what happens to a lot of women during perimenopause. So it's not just. Perimenopause itself, it's because of the changes in the hormones that your body is going through in perimenopause that causes your system to be overstressed. So I just wanna make that kind of point out.'cause people are like, how do I tell if I'm under recovered? Or if it's just perimenopause? It's it doesn't actually matter. But what it is telling you is that your body's overstressed and if your body is overstressed, you need recovery. Period. It doesn't matter if that stress is coming from perimenopause or training or other areas. These are signs that your body is over stress and under recovered. Okay, so let me go back to my list. So fatigue, mood changes, anxiety, increased soreness. If you're noticing that you're, just sore all the time, or you're more sore than you normally would be after an easy workout or even after a harder workout. If you're noticing that when you go out for your run and you're putting in that effort based training, you're trying to hit that easy pace and your pace is slower than it used to be, or your medium pace, your moderate tempo type of pace is slower than it used to be on a consistent basis, right? This isn't one run. One run doesn't mean anything, but if you like. Consistently week after week, month after month, you're noticing that your paces keep slowing down. That is a sign that you are undercovered. If you're noticing poor sleep, if you're noticing sugar cravings or things like that, you're probably not fueling your body as well. And if you're not fueling your body and giving it what it needs, you're not gonna be recovering the way that your body needs to. And then of course, the. if you continue with the under recovery, if you're getting sick all the time, if you're frequently ill, or if you're just always having more aches and pains, those little niggles, and then of course those injuries, right? Minor injuries or major injuries, those are all signs that your body is overstress and it just can't adapt. It's not able to handle what. What's going on?

Kevin: 45:02

Yeah. And as you pointed out, all of these kind of go together and you're, it doesn't exactly matter what the cause of it is. And it doesn't matter if the causes too much stress or not enough recovery. If you're seeing these things, you can treat too much stress by increasing recovery like you can handle. Extra stress By increasing the level of recovery, you don't necessarily have to reduce the stress. You just have to really ramp up recovery in, in ways that we've talked about. poor sleep and sugar cravings, these guys go together. If you aren't giving yourself proper fuel, the body is going to want the easiest source of fuel it can. That's where the sugar cravings come from. Your body's I need. Anything and I need quick energy, so just gimme straight sugar because I'm running so low that my brain isn't even working correctly.

Angie: 45:45

Yeah.

Kevin: 45:46

So these are where they're all, they all come together.

Angie: 45:48

Everything's coming together here. And the important message for you to understand is that your body is not fighting you. Your body's not failing you. Your body is not broken. It's communicating with you. And recovery is how you respond to the communication that your body is giving you. Your body's. Asking you, begging you in some circumstances to give it more sleep or to more fuel or more recovery. And that's our job to start recognizing that and giving our body what it needs.

Kevin: 46:19

Okay, so how do we actually deal with this? How do we optimize our recovery? An opener after you work out

Angie: 46:27

opener,

Kevin: 46:27

after you work out, you gotta recover, put some fuel into yourself.

Angie: 46:30

You gotta refuel,

Kevin: 46:31

you've got to re,

Angie: 46:32

you said recover.

Kevin: 46:34

How do you, I said, how do you recover? Put some fuel into yourself.

Angie: 46:36

Yeah, sorry.

Kevin: 46:37

So refuel yourself. Yeah. 20 to 30 grams of protein with some carbs. People go so big on the protein, they're like, I gotta get the protein in. If you don't take in the protein with carbs, your body doesn't know what to do with it. If you dump a pile of bricks at a construction site, but don't bring any mortar, you're not getting a wall. So you gotta make sure that you actually bring the protein and some carbs so that your body can actually utilize the proteins that you're providing it. You gotta hydrate after you've worked out, you've lost sodium, you've lost a variety of other electrolytes and you've lost fluids. So make sure that you are getting the fluids back in. Make sure that you're replacing some of your key electrolytes, especially the sodium. The fluids are super important with the protein and the carbs because if you're super dehydrated, you just don't have the ability to move things through your body to aid in the recovery process.

Angie: 47:25

Yeah, this is like our new dog. He. Has been eating kibble at his foster home. And so obviously with changing homes, we're not gonna also just change his food right away. So we're continuing to feed him kibble. And one of the things that I've noticed is how much,'cause our previous dog, she ate kibble sometimes, but her main. Food Source was a brand called Fresh Pet. And it was like, we bought that in the refrigerator section. Maybe they'll sponsor us. Woo. yeah, come sponsor our running podcast. You never know though, because this guy will run with me. He ran with me today and he did such a good job. He's Who

Kevin: 47:59

run with you? He's huge. I know. He was he's the size of my car for all of our listeners.

Angie: 48:03

No, he is not. He is not that big. It's funny'cause he's big for us for sure. He's, he is much bigger than our previous dog. he's about 42 pounds right now. He's a small standard poodle for those of you that he's huge wondering. He's and he's black and white and he's so cute. Anyway, He drinks a lot of water. He drinks so much more water than our last dog did. And I think that a big part of that is the kibble because the, with the dried food, going back to your point of hydration is, when you have that dried food, you need the water to go with it so that your body can actually digest it.

Kevin: 48:35

Yes. He also drinks louder than any other dog that has ever existed. And

Angie: 48:39

he's wonderful. And you love him? Not yet. Yeah. I know you don't. I'm not. I'm not forcing that on you yet.

Kevin: 48:45

Thank you. Number three, active recovery.

Angie: 48:47

Oh, I get to talk about this one. Go. So active recovery is another way that you can optimize your recovery. This. So a lot of people, when they think recovery, they think, okay, I'm just gonna go lie on the couch. Or I'm gonna just sit by the pool and that is a great way to recover pass. That is what is known as passive recovery. Just resting. But active recovery is a fantastic way for you to. For your body to recover, especially if you're a woman over 40. There's a lot of women that find that if they just lay around and don't do much, they're actually more sore and active recovery can really help. So this is things like going on a walk or doing some gentle mobility, not doing a workout, but doing some gentle mobility or some yoga. If yoga is something that's easy for you. There are some of our clients that use swimming as active recovery because they used to be a competitive swimmer, so swimming is something that's very easy for them. For me, swimming is not easy, so that would not be a form of active recovery for me, but their body very much knows and loves. Swimming. So that's a very easy, gentle form of active recovery for them. So the whole point of active recovery is that it feels easy, it feels gentle. It's just putting your body through nice, gentle movement throughout the day.

Kevin: 49:57

Yeah. This is where cross training comes in, is it's a stress to your body, but it's not. Enough of a stress to continue to boost excessively on the stress side. It actually just creates some movement, increases some circulation through your body so that all of the repair stuff can actually move nicely through your body. it's super helpful. And what active recovery looks like for you is very different from one person to the next. we've got the Chicago Marathon was just over the weekend. If you're talking about the active recovery of the people who are winning the Chicago Marathon, they're going out and jogging at eight minute pace. That is active recovery for them because they're racing a marathon at four and a half minute pace. And so it all depends on what that recovery looks like for you. The key is that it feels super, super comfortable. Walking is great because it is less pounding than running is. Yeah. That's also why biking and swimming are fantastic, as long as those don't feel overly stressful for you. I don't enjoy swimming for distance, and so that would just be remarkably mentally stressful for me.

Angie: 50:59

Yeah. Which then is not active recovery. That's another important thing that I want you to. Point out or that I wanna point out here. And I'm glad you made that point. If it is mentally stressful for you, that is also not an active recovery day. another thing you could do is schedule your rest breaks. We suggest typically one full day off per week. Now again, when I say a full day off, that can include active recovery. It doesn't mean that you have to sit around on the couch all day. It can include going out for walking. It can include some gentle mobility. But having a rest day where you are not actively, training is a really good thing for your body, especially over the age of 40. And then of course, you wanna do things that help to regulate your stress levels. Think about that stress bucket. We wanna do things that are gonna help decrease the water level in our stress bucket. So things like breath work, sitting and just. Literally breathing for five minutes can do wonders for your nervous system and your stress regulation. It is, I think that we underestimate so much the importance of just sitting quietly for five minutes and just breathing. It is, there's so many studies people can call it meditation. People call it breath work. It's just sitting and being. You like just sitting and being, not doing anything. Not thinking a million different things. Just focusing on your breath makes a huge difference. Things like journaling, doing a brain dump. Just we were on our coaching call today. And one of our clients was telling us all, there just, there's a lot of stuff going on in her life right now. And I suggested get a journal and just do a brain dump where you just write down all the crap that's going on in your head without a filter. Just dump it all out on the piece of paper, I had another client that I suggest that she was having, trouble sleeping and. I suggested that she do this, and she emailed me like a week later and she couldn't believe it. She's Angie, I can't believe this. I've literally been doing this for the past couple of days and I've slept through the night. The last three or four days, I haven't woken up at 3:00 AM She was waking up every night at 3:00 AM and then staying up and not been able to get back to sleep. And just by instituting the brain dump before bed, she was able to sleep through the night and it was making a huge difference in how she felt.

Kevin: 53:17

I wanna go back to breath work for a second. breath work. Go. People can talk about it as meditation. You could use it as a prayer ritual also. Yeah. but don't do it as something where you're judging yourself about how well you're doing, because now suddenly it's not a way to regulate your stress. It's a way to increase your stress. Yeah. If you're working on breath, oh my God, I'm

Angie: 53:35

doing it wrong.

Kevin: 53:36

Yes. Yeah. if through the entire thing, you're trying to make sure that you're, you are appropriately. Breathing that you're, oh, I'm, I've gotta breathe in for four and out for four, and this time I only breathed in for three. It's, it should not be anything that is increasing your stress. It's supposed to be a calm and peaceful time.

Angie: 53:52

Yeah, very good point. And then time in nature can be very grounding and very regulating. Walking barefoot on grass or on sand, like actually on the earth, has been shown by different research studies to do a world of good. You could do that for five to 10 minutes in the morning. getting morning sunlight, also very good for you. And again, don't let all these things, you don't have to do every single one of these things. Pick one, pick one to start with. And if you're like, oh, you know what, I can do that. I can go out for a walk. I can go put my feet in the grass in the morning. That sounds actually like a really good thing. Maybe you go put your feet in the grass for five minutes and you take breath, like you breathe. That's it. You just go stand in the grass and breathe or sit in the sit, put your chair and put your feet in the grass. and just breathe. It's pretty wild.

Kevin: 54:37

If you're already doing drill work up and down your sidewalks in your neighborhood, everybody thinks you're weird in the first place. So go outside and just pop a squat in your lawn. Put your feet in the grass. It's gonna be great.

Angie: 54:47

Perfect. Exactly. So I want you to think of your energy levels like a bank account. So every run, every training session is you removing from your bank account and recovery is a deposit back into that bank account. Just like your regular bank account, if you withdraw constantly without adding back in, eventually you're gonna overdraft. And that's what happens with our training. So I hope you now understand that recovery is a part of your training. It's not separate from it, it's not optional, it's not a second. It should never, ever be an afterthought. It should be something that is planned in to your training because adaptation. Depends on the balance between stress and rest. And if you are constantly stressing the body and not resting, you are not going to make the progress that you want. And especially if you are someone over 40, especially if you are a woman over 40, honoring recovery is how you get stronger. but that this sentence really does apply to anyone, no matter your age. Honoring your recovery is how you get stronger. It's not a sign of you slowing down. It's not a sign of you getting older. Like it's not a sign of, oh my God, I have to do this now. Like this is you honoring this next phase of your life. And that is a beautiful thing because if you want to perform better, if you wanna feel better, if you wanna keep running for decades, you have to protect and safeguard your recovery, just like you protect and safeguard your training. That's what I've got. What do you got, Kev?

Kevin: 56:16

No, I thought that was a great way to do it because so many people safeguard their training. They figure out I will move all sorts of things around my schedule to make sure that I can get in my workouts. You have to safeguard your recovery just as strong.

Angie: 56:26

Absolutely. So if you found this episode helpful, number one, make sure you join us because this is just the first episode in our recovery series. In the next couple of episodes, we're gonna be going into some of those specific recovery. Tools and modalities, things like foam rolling, cold plunging, sauna, compression, all sorts of fun stuff. to help you understand what's going on with those things, which ones should you focus on, which ones are maybe a waste of your time. and, we'll just help you understand how to recover better because you are not going to make the progress that you want unless you are recovering. Also, if you found this episode helpful, please leave us a review, leave us a comment, share this episode with a friend, help us share the podcast and help more runners to get better and to feel better and to run their life. And as always, thanks for joining us. This has been The Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 431. Now, get out there and run your life.