Yesterday’s long run turned into a bit of a slog. Deb woke up with a pinched nerve in her neck, and I was feeling, well, crappy. Fatigued. Lethargic. We started with a walk, thinking that might be enough. Once we were warmed up, we slowly added some pace, but our run ended up being well short of what we planned to do, both in distance and pace. It was one of those runs best forgotten.
There may be more to the story than bad luck. You see, Sunday was two weeks on from a half-marathon that we ran in Vancouver. (Incidentally, it was the fantastic and well-organized First Half Half. Highly recommended!)
Although two weeks should be an adequate recovery period for a half, it got me thinking about how much downtime is enough after a race. I’ve always subscribed to an easy-to-remember formula that I learned years ago. It goes like this: treat yourself to one easy day for each mile you race.
Spelling it out, for a 10k race that means (more or less) a week of easy running; for a half marathon, two weeks; and for a marathon, a month.
There is a tendency to want to shorten these recovery periods. After all, if we had a positive race experience, why wouldn’t we want to get back in the saddle as soon as possible?
For me, that has usually not been an option. Inevitably, racing has taken more out of me than I’m willing to admit. Even after the immediate post-race soreness had cleared, the residual fatigue was too much to overcome in a few days. My effort in interval workouts or long runs during the recovery period, if I could do them at all, had to be scaled back significantly.
Add in the effects of aging, and whatever issues come along with it, and the rule-of-thumb recovery periods should get even longer. It makes sense that we aren’t as quick to bounce back as we used to be.
So, whether or not our recent experience was tied to an inadequate recovery or just bad luck, it’s worth remembering that a race puts major stress on our bodies. In summary, we should always respect the need for a full recovery.
My Second Running Life 