Post-Marathon Recovery

The other day (which, by the way, was a Tuesday) I decided to look up information on marathon recovery. Planning for recovery from my first marathon had been easy. I finished the race, thought to myself, "I'm so glad I did that but never again," and promptly flew a couple of thousand miles to visit my sister in her part of the world. This time, after blocking out that never again and the rest of the race as a survival mechanism (thanks, evolution), I ended up really enjoying the experience and feeling empowered by the race: "I just ran 26.2 miles. That's pretty awesome. Wow. Mmm, chocolate milk. So delicious. Ooh, not running. I love this already." Oh wait, that was after the race. Anyway, the race was empowering and I felt afterwards like I had tapped into those awesome superhero powers we're told about in the yoga studio.

Taking this empowerment to the office Tuesday, along with far less pain than I had any business feeling given my semi-questionable adherence to and alterations of my training routine, I looked up post-marathon recovery to answer a question I had: now that I finally get this running thing (or at least have my marathon shuffle down pat), when can I run again? The pages I read told me that marathoners can start light jogging again one week after the race and that full physical recovery, given a sensible and gradual return to exercise, is generally projected at one day per mile of racing. Twenty-six days of recovery, about a month. At least I could be back in action in a week! The websites also spent a great deal of time on mental recovery, usually mentioning this one-week / 26-days physical aspect as almost an afterthought after devoting paragraphs and pages to coping with post-marathon depression-like symptoms. You've spent so much time working towards this one goal, the sites told me, that it can be hard to handle being past it. No matter how your race went, it's time to pick another goal and move your focus to the future to get yourself feeling better. That's interesting, I thought, but not particularly relevant to me. I was feeling GREAT, after all. I could do ANYTHING. If I could have bounced off walls, I would have. That was Tuesday morning.

Let's fast-forward to Thursday morning. I've now had two full days at work (we had Monday off to honor Memorial Day). By full I don't mean full of work, as it's very quiet in the office this week now that the students are gone. Few projects with any deadline whatsoever gives significant time for thinking. Combine the feeling of lower work-day productivity with the post-marathon physical lull and you've got a recipe for dispiritedness. It's already tough to go from spending all your time training to limiting yourself to a long walk or light cardio session each day; couple that with the major goal (there's a marathon on the horizon!) being past and a mental pick-me-up is in order.

Here I can report on one positive step from today and one challenge:
On the positive side, I realized that I have never completed an Olympic-distance triathlon (my shortest and longest triathlon distance thus far is the half ironman) and it wouldn't take a ton of training to finish one. I spent a good amount of time today looking up New England races at the Olympic distance coming up in the next two months. As the recovery guides told me, this is a great time to set a next racing or performance goal.
On the challenging side, I erged today for the first time since the race and my body did not love the experience. I set out to do a light 30 minutes so I didn't go stir-crazy with the lack of non-walking cardio. The first 25 were fine, but the inside of my left knee felt the final five in the same spot it had felt the last few miles of pounding on race day. I finished more out of stubbornness than intelligence, though I suppose that stubbornness helps maintain sanity and self-preservation could be viewed as a form of intelligence.

Though it was clear while erging that my body is still very much rebuilding from all the impact built up on Sunday, I'm still looking forward to a VERY light jog this Sunday. (This time, I'll try to be smart about listening to my body if pain arises.) Until then, I'll work on creating my Olympic-distance training plan.