OWL-DRAGON

Marathon Recovery

I am curious what other runners are doing for recovery. Both on line articles and in the many running books I have, marathon recovery means very little running and certainly no speed work. The recovery period is one day for every mile run but some recommend even longer.

Certainly, I don’t want to risk injury and I am sure these recommendations are based on real runners’ experience.

However, I do wonder – while I am on my feet twice as long as an elite runner I don’t believe my running either before or during the race is as stressful as the for the elite runner.

I went out today for a recovery run – whereas on a “normal” Sunday I would so 10 to 12 miles, today I did about 4.5. I will admit my legs felt somewhat heavy, but that may have been due to yesterday’s 15 trips to the attic for Christmas decorations rather than marathon running. No serious aches. It was rather nice to make that last turn from home and feel full of energy (good thing since I had a couple of hours of leaf raking ahead of me.)

So I will keep the mileage down (and with the Christmas season coming that’s a necessity anyway) but on December 11th, I will run a local 5K and hope to run hard. Then it’s time for Christmas lights running. After that it I will look into some
cross training – I am especially hoping to do some biking if the weather cooperates. But I still wonder how much?

So what is your winter schedule like?