Marathon Recovery

10/20/2013

Lots of folks running marathons this weekend and in the weekends to come. Now is probably a good time to remind ourselves of the post marathon recovery period.

I have to confess...I never got the marathon recovery thing right. I was always too impatient...never allowing enough time for rest and relaxation. If I was lucky...it simply delayed my recovery. If I was unlucky...it lead to injury and/or illness.

Since I obviously don't know much about marathon recovery, I found an article that does a good job of explaining how the post-marathon recovery period should be handled. You can read it here.

All I can say is...be kind to yourself.

PS...if any of you ran a marathon this past weekend...maybe you could post your results and/or experiences to the "comments" section here. Thanks.

6 Comments

Mary Burkinshaw

10/22/2013 10:17:42 am

Hi Paul, I ran the Baystate Marathon on Sunday and qualified for Boston!!!! Believe it or not! I needed a 4:10 to qualify and did a 4:08:09! 9:29 pace which is flying for me!! LOL I also ran the Tufts 10K last Monday and PR'ed there too 52:17, 8:25 pace I think. Two PR's in a week woohoo!

Paul

10/22/2013 10:26:50 am

Mary,

That's brilliant. Did they drug test you...hee hee? Just kidding. Have you been doing anything different with your training?

Congratulations!

Paul

Mary Burkinshaw

10/22/2013 10:55:36 am

Thanks Paul! Not to be a wise guy, but - I ran faster LOL and, well, I did take an Advil at mile 16 :) One thing I did differently was to focus on tempo runs, which I have never done before. I think when I saw the improvement it gave me more motivation to keep going. I did all my long runs with a time frame in mind. Before I would just go for a long run and didn't think about how long it took me, I'd just get the miles in. This time I went out at almost my race pace and walked/jogged for about 25 - 30 seconds each mile. So I was doing my long runs at about a 10minute pace as opposed to an 11 plus minute pace in my previous marathons. I was 4 minutes ahead of schedule at mile 20 and felt great, at mile 23 I could feel myself tanking a bit so I slowed it down but still finished with 2 minutes to spare!!

Paul

10/22/2013 12:31:05 pm

Hey Mary,

Thanks for the feedback. Were the walk breaks just in training or did you use them in the race as well? Sounds like you really put your mind to improving.

All the best,
Paul

Mary Burkinshaw

10/23/2013 09:00:39 am

Hey Paul, I just used the walk breaks during the training. I did slow down at water stops and I walked a bit at a couple of them in the marathon. Yeah, I had a few goals, first was to qualify of course, then I thought if I could do a 4:15 which was the old qualifying time I'd be good with that, then the last one was to beat my time at Hartford last year which was 4:24. I just kept telling myself that this is not impossible and things just came together :) Now I want to break 4 hours haha!!!

Mary Burkinshaw

10/23/2013 09:01:27 am

Oh - I love the blog by the way!!!

Marathon Recovery

Leave a Reply.

Author

Archives

Categories