Ruth Astle is ready for her first Kona campaign as a pro – and will be fully fresh and ready to race thanks to embracing recovery technology.
The last time Ruth Astle raced at the Ironman World Championships in Kona it was 2019 and she came away with the overall win in the female age group field. Now, three years later, Ruth returns to the Big Island to take on her first World Championship bid on the island as a professional.
Ruth is no stranger to top-class pro racing though – the Brit took a stunning fifth place at the most recent Ironman World Championships held in St George, Utah – however, Ruth has been itching to cut her teeth at her next race on the Big Island having previously excelled in the conditions.
Ruth’s journey, like all professional triathletes, requires a huge volume of swim, bike and run training mileage as well as additional strength work. A typical week will consist of hundreds of kilometres across swimming, indoor and outdoor cycling and running. And, as professionals and age groupers alike well know, this will leave even the most elite athletes in a state of physical and mental fatigue.
Banking those miles week-in and week-out is the core component of being able to perform out on the race course, so the ever-improving technology and science supporting athletic performance become ever more important.
This is perhaps best displayed by the current force of nature that is Team Norway with Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden nailing the use of data in their training and racing. Now that the triathlon world has taken note of this successful implementation of data and technology, more and more athletes have started adopting the same methods. For example, Lionel Sanders and Colin Chartier – recent winner of the PTO US Open – are now adopting a scientific approach to all aspects of training and recovery through their coach, Mikael Iden – brother of world beater Gustav.
Like these other stars of the sport, Astle has recognised the importance of optimising every process that supports her training and cracked her recovery game. We all know that it’s best practice when finishing a session to spend time stretching or foam rolling, however, most of us (even the pros!) often find this more of a chore than the actual session.
Having realised that there are potential gains being thrown away when you are putting in hours and hours of training by not maximising your downtime, the Brit has embraced MyoMaster‘s MyoAir compression boots and MyoPro massage guns as a key component of her recovery protocol.
The theory behind the MyoAir compression boots is that applying cyclical compression to the legs increases blood flow, which delivers more oxygen to the muscles, helping to clear lactic byproducts more quickly and supporting additional muscle growth. The compression applied also soothes the muscles being compressed, mimicking massage.
The key difference is that Ruth can immediately access her MyoAirs when she gets back home from a session with her feet up on the sofa as opposed to arranging a visit from – or travelling to – a massage therapist which even for pros isn’t a practical option after every session.
Equally, being able to use the MyoPro massage gun any time – whether immediately after sessions or when you feel any little niggles – means access to improved recovery and injury prevention on demand.
So why MyoAirs and not other compression boots? MyoMaster says that the maximum compression of their devices is two and a half times stronger than any other product on the market – and that the stronger the compression, the more it benefits recovery. For any athlete focused on performance, that’s a huge benefit to take into training and racing. Likewise, the MyoPro massage gun is the strongest of any percussive massage gun on the market, giving pros like Ruth or age-groupers the best tool to be able to target any deep knots or niggles.
Ruth was also attracted to use the MyoMaster range because the brand was founded by ex-professional Harlequins rugby player Joe Gray and his wife Lottie Whyte, the pair’s brand sharing the ‘by athletes, for athletes’ ethos. Compared to the bombardment of other brands joining the recovery tech market, that inherent understanding of athletic performance means the products are tailored to athletes who are truly seeking the best performance possible.
With training finished in the lead-up to the race, Astle switched to full taper mode, getting the body fully recovered and fully absorbing all of the training from the long build process. It’s this recovery that’s the cherry on top of the miles and miles and hours and hours of hard graft. So when there are easy ways to optimise recovery, Ruth was the first to grab hold of it with both hands!
The women’s race of the Ironman World Championship 2022 is being held on Thursday 6 October and you can watch Ruth and the full women’s race via the Ironman Now Facebook page from 17:00 UK time.
