Marathon Recovery

After having a few days to think about it I have concluded that I had messed up last week. I did a taper workout 4 days before the marathon, which included 3 half mile repeats. I ran them too hard, at least the final 2. I was pretty much wiped out afterwards, much in contrast to the pickup workout the previous weekend when I easily could have done more. The legs felt pretty bad the next few days, not when running but when sitting! It made the drive to Kerry on Friday evening seriously uncomfortable. I'm absolutely sure those hills in Cork would have been much less of an issue had I run those repeats just 5 or 10 seconds slower.

Obviously, I have been taking it easy the last few days since the marathon, running-wise that is (work-wise is very very busy, but I love it).

The day after the marathon I was in Castlecove, surrounded by a lot of very hungover friends and family, the look of whom made me glad that I don't drink any more. However, I had one problem: there were no obvious running routes, at least not for road running. The options were 1) the main Ring of Kerry road, 2) some minor local cul-de-sacs, most of them short and all of them very hilly. I really did not fancy the main road and anyway, it wasn't exactly flat either, so a minor local road it would be. One of them happened to go to Staigue Fort, an ancient ring fort, so I decided to combine running and sight seeing. The fort is high up the hills, so it wasn't the most obvious choice for a recovery run the day after a marathon but the location is truly spectacular. I didn't hang around for too long, however, as it started to rain and I was getting cold quickly.

I was pleased how well the legs felt. They were a little bit stiff but the marathon did not seem to have left much of an impression. However, I still made sure to take it exceptionally easy every time I ran.

Funnily enough, the legs felt reasonably ok on the drive to Dublin on Monday evening. That means I had fresher legs the day after a marathon than before - now that's a first!

The running on the following days was just commuting, first alternating running and cycling and then just running on Thursday. The legs felt close to recovered on Wednesday but to my dismay were worse again on Thursday morning (no idea why!). Then again, all it took was 10 hours in the office and they were much better on the evening run back home

All in all I seem to have recovered very, very well. Since the coach states that the way you recover from a workout says more about your conditioning than how the workout itself went, I take this as a very good sign.

5 Jun

5.8 miles, 55:29, 9:33 pace, HR 132

6 Jun

5.35 miles, 44:58, 8:24 pace, HR 135

7 Jun

5.5 miles, 46:00, 8:21 pace, HR 136

8 Jun

am: 5.5 miles, 45:51, 8:20 pace, HR 134

pm: 5.5 miles, 45:13, 8:13 pace, HR 137