Recovery for Ultra Runners: Sleep, Nutrition, and Timing

Why recovery is where the adaptation happens

Training is a stimulus but the actual fitness gains happen during recovery, when your body repairs and adapts to the stress you've put it through. Runners who train hard without recovering properly don't get fitter, they just get more tired.

Recovery is as important as the work you put in during sessions, it just doesn't feel sexy and you can't measure it as well. I've seen it time and time again where people neglect their recovery, overtrain, get injured and have to take weeks and sometimes months off doing what they love.

I want you to imagine that at the start of a training week you have 100 credits. Every time you complete a hard session, an easy run, a strength session, stay out late, have a bad night's sleep, or forget to fuel, you're giving credits back. However, there are ways to regain credits too. Your aim is to finish the week near break even.

The good news is that it's much simpler than you think.

Sleep: the most underrated training tool

There is no supplement, no recovery modality, and no training hack that comes close to what sleep does for performance. Most athletes dramatically underestimate its importance.

Gone are the days where flexing a 5-hour sleep regime or constantly doing triple session days is impressive.

Think of recovery like a pyramid. The foundation of it is sleep. Nail that and you're already on your way. Trying to tell you exactly how much sleep you need is beyond my remit, but we've all heard that 8-9 hours per night is the recommended amount. What I will say is there is a big difference between 8 hours in bed and being asleep for 8 hours. Don't confuse one for the other.

Practical strategies for better sleep

If you struggle with your sleep, here are some things I've learnt from tracking mine for the last 7 years:

• Go to bed at the same time every night. Your body craves consistency
• Being on your phone in bed always makes sleep worse. Switching to reading for 10-20 minutes every night makes a real difference
• Try not to have a big meal within 2 hours of going to bed. Your body needs energy to digest food and if it's working on that, it can't relax and prepare for sleep
• Invest in a good quality eye mask. Being able to fully black out the room can make a significant difference

Nutrition for recovery

What you eat in the hours after a hard session or long run has a direct impact on how well you recover and how ready you are for the next effort.

The recovery window

Most of us know that eating a source of carbohydrates and protein as close to the end of a session as possible is key. But not all of us know how much to aim for or where to get it from.

My general preference is to keep it as simple as possible. A little bit of science first: it's been shown that a 3:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio is the ideal post-workout refuel. With that in mind, these are the things I tend to go for:

• Eggs on toast
• Protein and frozen fruit smoothie
• Chocolate milk (this is actually the perfect 3:1 ratio, I don't make the rules)
• Any normal meal with a source of protein (meat, tofu, eggs, fish, pulses), carbohydrates (potatoes, rice, pasta, bread) and vegetables

Please don't come away from this thinking it has to be complicated. It just has to be effective.

One thing to add: the better you become at fuelling your sessions (pre and intra-session) the better your recovery will be. Recovery doesn't start after your sessions. It can start before and during them.

Active recovery: what counts and what doesn't

Let's get one thing straight. Active recovery is a symptom-solving exercise, not a recovery-inducing one, and we need to understand the difference. A recovery run still creates stress on the body. A slow, easy session won't create much, but it is not helping you recover. It might stimulate some blood flow and you might feel a little better afterwards, but that is the symptoms feeling better, not you actually recovering. Recovery days should feel uncomfortably sedentary and are not an excuse to walk 20k steps because you're not "training".

Going back to those credits. Let's say during the week you did all your sessions and a hard session cost you 18 credits, an easy run cost you 12, two gym sessions cost you 25, you stayed out late one night which cost you 13, and your housemate woke you up and you couldn't get back to sleep, another 9 credits gone.

You get to your recovery day and decide to do 20k steps and forget to eat. Rather than earn 30 credits back you might only get 17. Then a couple of times you didn't refuel properly and instead of earning 20 credits back you got 11. You're getting the point.

Your week operates as a whole, not as isolated instances. The small decisions you barely notice are the ones that determine whether your training actually sticks.

Signs you're not recovering well enough

There are obvious signs that you might be bordering on overtraining. These are the ones I watch for in my own training and in the athletes I coach:

• Persistent fatigue that doesn't lift after easy days
• Declining performance despite consistent training
• Irritability, low mood, or difficulty concentrating
• Elevated resting heart rate and/or low HRV over several days
• Recurrent minor illness or niggles
• Not looking forward to training
• Getting to the middle of the day and struggling to stay awake

Post-race recovery

Finishing an ultra is not the end of the process. What you do in the days, weeks and sometimes months after a race determines how quickly you return to full health and how much residual damage you carry into your next training block.

My rule for all my athletes after completing a marathon or ultra is a minimum of two weeks with no training. There are exceptions and it's very individual, but even with myself I won't do any structured training for at least two weeks.

The recovery process is very hard to measure and you might feel fine and present as fully recovered, but trust me, the chances are you're not. Coming back to baseline takes weeks and often months, especially if you're newer to the sport or have stacked multiple events in quick succession.

If you take away anything from this post, let it be that proper recovery is the most important lever you can pull to see improvements in your performance.

Recovery requires you to do less, not more.