Marathon Recovery

Recovering after a marathon is just as important as the training you do leading up to it.

After a half-marathon I ran last summer, I took a week off to recover, but when I was ready to run again, I realized I had no idea how to safely build up my mileage. I did some research and found that I should give myself about 4 weeks to recover.

I plan to follow the same model again this time. Here’s what it looks like:

Week #1 after the marathon: no running

Week #2:  25% of highest weekly mileage during the marathon training (I reached 52 miles during my marathon training, which would be 13 miles for this week. I actually did 17 because I was feeling okay.)

Week #3:  50% of highest mileage (26 miles for me)

Week #4:  75% (39 miles) (I might not jump up to 39 this quickly; I’ll just see how I’m feeling.)

From here I will probably go back to increasing by 10% each week because I don’t want to risk getting injured.

Here’s a great website by Hal Higdon (an icon in the running world) that goes into a lot more detail about recovering after a marathon.

My first week back at running (last week), I was running very slowly–about 1 minute per mile slower than my normal training pace. Even though my legs did not hurt anymore and I felt fine walking around, I knew my body/muscles are still recovering.

This morning I went for a 4 mile run. I felt pretty good–not quite up to par, but I feel as though I am making progress.

After my run this morning, I had a warm bowl of oats. It was cool on my run, so something warm sounded good.

My oatmeal contained:

* 1/4 cup old-fashioned oats

* 1/4 cup low-fat milk

* 1/4 cup water

* 1/2 banana, sliced

* chia seeds

* pure maple syrup

* peanut butter

* fresh strawberries

* coconut

And speaking of being cold, yesterday I was freezing!! The high was only about 60 degrees, which is normal for this time of the year, but I was feeling chilled.

So I “fired” up the stove and make some homemade blueberry jam!! (Cooking or baking usually warm me up–I start moving around more and having the oven or stove on warms our place up as well.)

Our freezer stopped working about a month back causing everything to melt. We had a large bag of frozen blueberries, but when they refroze, all the blueberries were in one large clump, which made it very difficult to use. So I decided it was best just to make some jam out of them.

Homemade jam does not even compare to the store-bought stuff!! I taste-tested it to make sure it was okay. . . don’t worry, it was excellent!! I am excited to make some raspberry jam later this summer once the raspberries start to grow. I think raspberry jam is my favorite!!