Finding the balance while training for the Comrades Marathon is tough on all athletes, let alone a mother aiming for a Silver medal. On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, Lindsey gives Heather (and many more of us) advice on how to juggle everyday life with the increased training. What are the keys to success?

Transcript

Welcome back to another edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, today’s question submitted from Heather Walden, I’m Brad Brown, Lindsey Parry with us. Lindsey, Heather is training for a Comrades silver and she wants to know what do you recommend she does; to help recover from the increasing mileage and quality sessions when juggling family life and job. Would you recommend massages, supplements, physio, chiro, stretching, any tips would be awesome? Racing snake, what’s the best way to go about it?

Lindsey Parry: So, look, I say this to everyone and obviously in her situation she is struggling or going to struggle to juggle. But the most important aspects of her recovery are sleep and really making sure that she eats really healthy foods, whole foods, she’s not eating and living out of tins and cans and the like.

Best ways to recover your muscles

Then after that, if she is getting those two things fairly good, bearing in mind that she does have a family etc that needs looking after, then the next steps are looking at things like compression tights, certainly a weekly massage.

Weekly massages are like gold for your muscles. Not just because of how much it helps the physical recovery process, but also because it really will help her to identify trouble spots as they arise. So that they can be dealt with swiftly if it’s needed, with a physio or something along those lines.

Those are really the best avenues for recovery, but you’ve got to, particularly in March and April when things get tough; you’ve really got to prioritize sleep and ensure that everything that goes in your mouth is healthy.

BB: Heather, thank you very much for that question, best of luck. I hope you do come right and it’s a difficult juggle being a mom and training hard and particularly when you’ve got a big goal like a silver, best of luck. We look forward to hearing how it goes. Until next time, from the two of us, it’s cheers.