Recovery

With apologies to Eminem for stealing the title of his most recent release, let me preface this by saying rather then recovering from some drug additicion, I am talking about recovering from a half marathon. I know, not nearly as exciting.

When I was running my first half, back in 2009, I saw a sign along the course that said "you don't need toenails anyway." This being my first long run, I kind of chuckled and kept going. After the race, when I changed my shoes, I saw one of my toenails was black...very appetizing. Sure enough, it fell off and I was sans one toenail for a while.It took me FOREVER to recover from this race. I believe I went home and took a 3 hour nap. I did not move for a couple of days and certainly did not run for a few weeks.

After this last half, I did nothing you could call exercise till Thursday, and then it was a 30 minute bike ride in the gym followed by light weights. This time I was happy with my recovery, and I ran a good training run on Sunday. This week it is back to the normal 4 and 6 mile runs during the week with some weights mixed in. I hope to one day be able to run a half and then get that twitchy leg feeling I get if I have not run in a while the day after the race.

My good friend, RA, just ran a half and had to take a few weeks off, and she is way fast, so I do not think there is a correlation between fitness level and recovery time. Some people just keep right on trucking, and there probably is a correlation between average miles per day and recovery time. If you are used to running 12, then a day with 13 is no big deal.We are all different, and it amazes me how different people and different bodies deal with the stress of running a half or full.

So here are some questions:

1. What do you do to help your post-race recovery?

2. How long do you usually wait after a half to resume your running schedule?

I Rocked Rock CF

Date: 03/25/12
Route:  Rock CF Half Marathon
Distance: 13.1 miles
Pace: 11:48/mile
Total Time: 2:34:29
Temp: 54 and cloudy

I was a little worried going into this race, as I have had a very bad week or so with running. I tried to do a long run last week of 12 miles, and ended up doing about 3 and deciding to sit down and rest. Mostly that was due to recovering from Pinkeye (funtimes, that), and trying to run before I was really ready

The weather dawned cool and cloudy, perfect for a half. I had crashed at my Aunt's house, which was only about 15 minutes away from the start, which helped me be able to sleep a little later. I arrived about 6am, so I was able to check in with plenty of time. I am one of those annoying people who get to races with an hour or more to space because I cannot stand being rushed on race morning. 

After getting all decked out with the Garmin, Gu's etc, and hitting to porta potties, I went over to the start line. I was looknig for a friend of mine from way back in HS, Brad Thomas, who I saw was going to be there on Facebook. Brad has an amazing and inspirational story. We ran together back in HS, and he was one of those fast people. Last year Brad had a tow truck roll on top of him, breaking several bones and ribs and doing severe damage to his hip. The doctors told him that he might never walk again, and certainly would not be doing distance running. So the fact that I might be able to run with him for his first post accident (16 screws and 3 plates in the hip later) half was something I was looking forward to.

We were able to meet up just before the start and then we were off. I had set some modest goals for the run given my sickness over the past few weeks. Brad was just hoping to finish, and maybe crack a 13 min/mile pace. We agreed to run together for the first couple of mile and then reevaluate.We came out pretty well, pacing the first three at 11:28, 11:31 and 11:33, that is pretty consistent. Brad was worried about going to fast, and I had basically made the decision to stick it out with him. We dialed it back a tad, but still maintained a sub 12 pace.

The scenery on this race is amazing. Grosse Ile is a generally upper income community located on an island in the Detroit River. So we did a lot of running by VERY large houses, and almost the entire course was right on the water.  Great view for almost the entire race. The weather stayed cool and cloudy, and we kept ticking off the miles. The water stations were very well laid out, probably about every two miles, so that was nice. They even had a station giving out GU packets! You can never go wrong with some GU.

As we got closer to ten miles, I could feel my legs starting to revolt, and Brad was in the same situation. We slowed down a little, but still kept up a good pace. Mile ten was our slowest mile, at 13:11, and that was mostly because Brad had to do a wardrobe change to shed his long sleeve tee. We finished fairly strong, with Brad 2 seconds behind me. Our pace was 11:48/mile, which I was happy with, and Brad was ecstatic with. Here is the post race pic:

Overall, the race was extremely well run, and has definite PR potential. A couple of bloggers I follow PR'd at this race including Megan over at Watch MeGo Run and Rose at Hacker Half Marathon who PR's be an amazing 11 minutes! Did I maybe run a little slower to stay with Brad? Possibly, but also possibly not. I was worried about even being able to run this, and maybe his company helped push me to the finish line. 

So a couple of questions:

1. What is you morning of race routine?

2. How long do you take off after a half?

3. Who saw Hunger Games over the weekend? 

Here is my cool Garmin widget so everyone can spy on my entire race:

Hot and Cold

Date: 02/26/2012

Route: Hines Park 9 Miler
Distance: 9 Miles
Pace: 10:22/mile

Temp: 36 Degrees

Wind Chill of 24 degrees

One month to go. The official half marathon countdown has begun! With the Rock CF Half Marathon exactly 1 month away, training has gotten hot and heavy as of late. 9 miles was planned today, and 9 miles were completed with no problems, even a little faster then I thought I would. Next weekend will probably be the same and then I have the Corktown Races 5K, always my first race of the year and always a blast. My semi-official goal is to match my best 5k time from last year at my first 5k this year. Then it is the long run and the race.

This is by far the most aggressive running schedule I have ever had. I have never run more then 1 half in a year, and this year I have three scheduled. Usually I have a nice long slow ramp up to the Detroit Half in October; instead this year my second race is a half. Needless to say I am excited and a little anxious.

My real problem running lately has been temperature. It seems to be too warm for my snazzy NbX Windblocker, but too cold to run in my standard pullover. This results in a true paradox. If I run with the NbX jacket, I start off fine, but get too warm in about 2 miles, however if I run in the pullover I never quite get warm enough. I will be excited when the temp starts hanging out in the low to mid 40’s because that is perfect pullover weather. My luck we will jump right to the 60’s, which I guess is not something to realy complain about. Here is a nice snazzy pic from this 9 mile run: