The guy in this pic (it's not me by the way!) looks how I feel! The legs have been feeling better the last couple of days; hence I had scheduled a run for today, and I was looking forward to it. Off I set at a nice relaxed pace, eager to see how the legs reacted to running. 7:30 per mile was good and I even had some bounce in the legs. After 3.5 miles my calves tightened up slightly - not unusual for me. however, at 4.5 miles, my legs all but shut down! My knees ached so much I had to stop. I walked the last mile back to work, getting cold and wet in the process. To say I am disappointed is an understatement! My big fear when I decided to run the marathon was breaking myself! I now feel as though my fears have materialised! Am I expecting recovery too quickly? I suppose recovery depends on the amount of effort expended during the race; as I said, I have never dug so deep in a race before. What people do not know is the aftermath of the race, and I wonder if this has any bearing on my slow recovery. In effect , I did 2 marathons that day! To cut a long story short, me and Julie could not find each other. As a consequence, I was hobbling, stumbling, attempting to run around London for 5 hours immediately after the race. There is nothing else for it, more rest! My focus has to be the World Champs in August so some rest in April should be fine...........now I just need to get another 30 miles in on the bike today to make 200 miles this week......
Thursday, 24 April 2008
I Can Run .... I Can't Run 8-(
The guy in this pic (it's not me by the way!) looks how I feel! The legs have been feeling better the last couple of days; hence I had scheduled a run for today, and I was looking forward to it. Off I set at a nice relaxed pace, eager to see how the legs reacted to running. 7:30 per mile was good and I even had some bounce in the legs. After 3.5 miles my calves tightened up slightly - not unusual for me. however, at 4.5 miles, my legs all but shut down! My knees ached so much I had to stop. I walked the last mile back to work, getting cold and wet in the process. To say I am disappointed is an understatement! My big fear when I decided to run the marathon was breaking myself! I now feel as though my fears have materialised! Am I expecting recovery too quickly? I suppose recovery depends on the amount of effort expended during the race; as I said, I have never dug so deep in a race before. What people do not know is the aftermath of the race, and I wonder if this has any bearing on my slow recovery. In effect , I did 2 marathons that day! To cut a long story short, me and Julie could not find each other. As a consequence, I was hobbling, stumbling, attempting to run around London for 5 hours immediately after the race. There is nothing else for it, more rest! My focus has to be the World Champs in August so some rest in April should be fine...........now I just need to get another 30 miles in on the bike today to make 200 miles this week......
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3 comments:
Go back to your post and read the last line again. Then read it again. And again. Until you understand that 200 miles cycling in a week DOES NOT EQUAL REST AND RECOVERY.
Rest you fool, do nothing, take nice warm baths and self-massage your legs.
Are you sure you want some Turbo Man medicine on Saturday?
....sniff......oh I don't know....boo hoo.... not happy....going to browse wiggle for retail therapy.....sniff..
Mmmm, 5 hours of trundling around after a marathon, not good, and I bet you hadn't really eaten properly or rehydrated either? No wonder you are find it slow to recover, that's probably not far off the equivalent of doing an IM and you wouldn't expect to be back to normal training in under a fortnight (at the earliest) having done one of those!
Not sure about the cycling as part of recovery, it could be depending on the pace/effort level you are putting in, active recovery is a good thing generally speaking. Sounds like the legs are telling you they are not ready for running though. Don't despair you will recover and August is ages away yet.
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