Last week, one of my favourite people on earth swung by my home in North Vancouver, after finally finishing up a gruelling semester at Dalhousie University. My girlfriend came down for a week of fun, where we went to the coolest Aquarium, had ice cream, enjoyed several sessions of sushi, and appreciated all the nature that North Van has to offer.

This week, I’m in one of my favourite places on earth – the province of Quebec. I’m here for a pretty big Quebec race called Trail Coureur des Bois du Duschesnay, which is sponsored by my sponsor XACT Nutrition. With the combination of having the freedom to run and write on my own terms, free of work obligations and some of the natural stressors to life, and my girlfriend visiting last week, I felt it would be best to double up my Weekly Newsletters this week.

In this one, I’ll talk about my secrets to recovery, some of which I’m testing out for the first time in 2025. In the next part, I’ll talk about the secrets to my fuelling in 2025, even more of which I’m testing out for the first time. Both are pretty related, as fuelling aids recovery almost like nothing else, and it’s why so many course records are being broken around the world, only to have those same athletes be able to bounce back faster than ever. But let’s not get too far ahead. Let’s first talk about the keys to recovery. As Toad from the Mario series likes to say: Here we go!

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MY SECRETS TO RECOVERY

As someone who is forever injury prone and forever punished by simple recovery mistakes, I’m always scrutinizing over recovery.

Recovery is the single most important facet of training.

Way more important than the training itself.

It’s not only where those key adaptations take place. But it’s your body’s chance to allow you to continue to train and allow for those adaptations to continue to take place.

Without a proper recovery, there is no adaptation to the training. There is simply stress, and nothing else.

Your body gets better from the periods of rest, not from the periods of stress.

So recovery is pretty critical.

Back a few years ago, I put together a silly little article called ‘My method for optimal recovery: POSSM‘. In this article, I detailed the essential facets to recovery, such as optimal training in the first place, and things like strength, mobility and protein.

I’m sure this article still holds water, but I’m also sure that my approaches have changed massively in 2025, and are way more refined now.

I spoke a little about some of those changes to my mobility and strength work in various articles throughout this year so far:

1. The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
2. The changes to my training in 2025

But I’ve barely scraped the surface in touching on the very minute aspects to my recovery. So with that, here are some of the secrets I’ve been keeping, and how I’ve recovered from the demands of my high-octane exercise in 2025.