Recovery week, formerly known as Fat week, has officially come to a close.

There is something liberating about recovery week. Maybe it’s because I am so strict and scared during the taper in fear of stuffing up the one day I’ve spent 6 months training for that having absolutely no rules or boundaries or obligations feels extremely loose.

Don’t get be wrong, I’m not out partying or staying up late every night of the week, but the usual structure isn’t there and it’s kinda fun.

In retrospect, I feel pretty good about the planning for Taupo.

I had two weeks annual leave and we flew to New Zealand on the Tuesday and came back the following Tuesday. This gave me a little bit of time at the start to organise the final details and a little bit of time at the end to decompress before heading back to work.

I’ve probably said it before but working out the travel for racing is one of the hardest parts. We have been to New Zealand to race 7 times now so I’m less interested in playing tourist as I am going over and getting running, but flying is not kind to my body so I need to take that into consideration as well.

Recovery starts at the finish line

I always have a finish line bag packed and ready to go as soon as I finish the race. It usually just contains wipes and warm clothes.

Probably too much information, but I find chafe gets so much worse if you let that salt and muck on your skin, if I have to drive, even if it’s just half an hour, I will have a quick wet one shower and change my clothes and get warm.

If you don’t have crew or support, most races will offer a finish line bag service.

A well organised race will also have a pretty solid medical team at the finish line, just in case.

Food and hydration is the first port of call.

My post race tradition is two minute noodles but this year we got Hell Pizza as well, another Nz trip tradition.

Then it’s a shower and bed.

My bad habit is having a hot shower and then struggling to sleep because my body temperature is so high and absolutely everything hurts. If you can cool yourself off a little bit and take a Panadol this may help. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, take ibuprofen instead.

You should steer clear of NSAIDs at least three days either side of your race, including race day.

Get moving

Stay active but within reason.

Getting up will be hard, getting out of the car, also hard, stairs, yeah we won’t talk about those. But I find I recover better if I’m walking around a bit.

Long periods sitting tends to make it worse.

This year we went to the local market, to prize giving to collect the drop bags and went for a walk around the neighbourhood after the race.

The next day we checked out of Taupo and beaded back to Auckland, breaking up all the driving with a walking tour of the Hobbiton Movie set.

The clean up and race dissection

Cleaning up is an inevitable part of ultra running. The drop bags, the kit, the rubbish, it’s a big smelly mess. Even more so if you are travelling to and from New Zealand and Australia because of their strict quarantine rules.

I keep all my rubbish so I can go back and see if my fuelling plan actually went to plan.

Cleaning up is a good time to really think about your race as a whole, how each section went and how you can improve next time. There is something annoying therapeutic about scrubbing volcanic mud off your shoes with a toothbrush.

Have a go at other activities

I don’t know about you but when I’m training I don’t have a heap of time for other things.

So recovery week gives you a chance to try out that class, go for a bike ride, whatever it is that you would normally be running.

I think I’ve only ever paddled on holidays and frankly I don’t paddle. I sit in the front and heckle!

And I tried yoga. Well not really, yes it was a yoga class but it was puppy yoga!

Eat all the foods

I’m not joking here. No matter how your race nutrition plan turned out, you will be in a deficit and despite what instagram influencers want to tell you, a deficit is bad.

It stunts recovery and makes you feel crap.

Recovery week is the one time that I eat what I want, when I want.

But what about running?

The race was on Saturday and I ran on Wednesday. It was a very easy, run/walk style with my dogs when I got home.

All of my runs this week were an intentional run/walk. Either 1k/2min, 2k/2min or 2.5k/2min.

I got this from a physio I was working with last year when I was having ITB issues. It helped me continue to run further whilst getting my body used to continuous running.

Plus my elderly dogs really like it.

I’m not in a hurry to get back into structured training but I’ll bring in light weight training this week and increase the mileage a little bit.

I have big goals for 2025 but I need to recover from this one first.

I don’t think there is any hard and fast rules with recovery but you can stuff it up by just pretending you didn’t run 100k.

For some folks, the idea of running after a big training block and race is unimaginable. If this is the case, don’t run. Do something else if you really want or need to exercise.

This is a hard sport that you are meant to enjoy (type 2 fun for sure), including the training (that’s my favourite part). Your mind and mental mojo need time to recover too!

Accompanying YouTube video.