I would like to thank Adventure Medical Kits for their donation for July’s Ask Reba Giveaway. It is essential to have a first aid kit around when riding or spending anytime outdoors for that matter. The Women’s specific kit is awesome, and I carry a modified version of one myself in my hydration pack for those scary moments. As always we had plenty of amazing questions, and my job is a hard one, choosing.
Sara Richardson, a Restwise user asked a great question about her training that isn’t addressed too often.
Q: I was wondering…with Restwise…what happens if you wake up on race day, put in your numbers and it tells you to take a day off?
A: According to my coach, Matthew, a high score does not necessarily guarantee a great result. FYI, my score was 90 this AM and I felt flat and slow today even though on paper, I shouldn’t have. Similarly, a low score does not mean you’ll have a bad day. It just means on paper, you haven’t fully recovered from life, training, whatever, but you should still by all means go out on race day and work as hard as you can. They’ve also had athletes with low scores race morning, due to stress, lack of sleep, being nervous about the race and then they pop a good one.
The recovery score should not keep you from racing. Instead, it should assist you more with training when you have the freedom to change your plans. It’s also important to look at trends. If you are always trending toward low scores, then a major adjustment is needed in lifestyle or training. If it’s just one day of low scores due to travel (this happens to me all the time) or some other unavoidable factor such as your kids kept you up all night, then it’s not a trend. You can just be conscious to get more sleep the next night, hydrate better, stretch, relax, etc when you hit these occasional low scores.
Thanks for the question Sara, and I hope you never have to use your new first aid kit, but if you do, now you are prepared!
