Ice Baths

This little video popped up in my RSS feed today.  Its From Triathlete Magazine on recovery using ice baths.  No mention of bath toys though.  In the comments was a link to a story in Outside Magazine trying to debunk ice baths as a myth.  It cites a few studies saying athletes felt no difference in soreness levels.  Using myself as a one man study group my findings are pretty conclusive that they work.

My take on ice baths is that they reduce swelling not soreness.  Even if it is just psychological something is happening.  Yesterday I went for a recovery run.  I figured I'd be pretty blown & planned on just 4 miles very easy.  Felt good enough to cruise 5 miles at 7:20 pace no problem.  To me that means the ice bath & compression after worked.

Sunday Run

I got out & braved the winds yesterday.  20-30 pretty steady with a max wind gust of 44mph.  Pretty sure I got hit by that one.  I set out to run 16 miles at sub 7:15 pace.  Was going pretty good till I hit the wind at mile 9.  Mile 10 i skirted a direct headwind but a steady cross.  Mile 11 started to turn into the wind.  Mile 12 full on headwind while running mostly uphill.  Recouped a bit but the damage was done & still had 4 more miles of mostly headwind running left.  Still an overall avg pace of 7:23 isn't too bad.

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	1:58:06.6	16.01	7:23
1	7:06.8	1.00	7:07
2	7:01.2	1.00	7:01
3	6:55.3	1.00	6:55
4	7:05.4	1.00	7:06
5	7:12.5	1.00	7:13
6	7:13.5	1.00	7:14
7	7:09.1	1.00	7:09
8	7:09.7	1.00	7:10
9	7:19.6	1.00	7:19
10	7:23.7	1.00	7:24
11	7:30.6	1.00	7:31
12	8:04.1	1.00	8:04
13	7:38.6	1.00	7:38
14	7:40.5	1.00	7:41
15	7:56.1	1.00	7:56
16	7:37.3	1.00	7:37
17	:02.6	0.01	7:11

My average heart rate was pretty low.  Lower than I thought it should be.  This started last week & I thought it was my HR battery so I put a new one in.  Readings still seem a bit low.  I'm guessing its the HR monitor.  It could be fitness related or fatigue related but since a battery semi cured it I'm going HR problem.  I'm going to try some gel & see if I get more accurate readings.

When I got home I jumped straight into an ice bath for 10 minutes.  Its a little known fact but the key to a quality ice bath is bath toys.  Makes the freezing more bearable. 

I take my ice bathes fully clothed(running shorts & a long sleeve in this case).  No sense completely freezing.  Plus I wanted to finish the podcast I was listening to.  I'm looking pretty wind blown.

After my ice bath I doubled up on the compression.  Compression tights with compression socks.  If a little compression is good for you the a lot must be better?  Who knows but my legs feel pretty good this am so maybe.

Amber finally got me to go to the Y.  We took the kids to the pool to swim in the kiddie pool for awhile.  Plus I needed to get my ID so I can start going from time to time.  I'm wanting to swim some laps on my days off & maybe use the climbing wall a little.