Marathon Recovery

Audio Transcript

Coach Claire Bartholic: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Runners Connect Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast.

Today’s question is from Kirsten and it is about back to back marathons and how to recover from them.

Kirsten: I just ran back-to-back marathons, Boston and London and my next marathon will be in Chicago in October.

I feel pretty good, but I know I need some down time to heal my body and prevent burnout. In this downtime, should I be running at all, or only cross training and is there anything I should not be doing?

Claire: Thanks for sending in your question. Kirsten is one of our Runners Connect athletes and this past April, she ran two iconic marathons in less than one week apart.

That is an amazing feat to be able to pull off and you have my respect. I am glad you asked this question.

Most athletes are more concerned about their next race or when they can get back to running and are less focused on what their body needs to recover.

Many runners, especially those who have run a few marathons, might not even be sore a few days after the race, and they equate their lack of soreness with being completely recovered.

Just because you are not sore, does not mean that you are recovered. Often, runners who do not follow a proper post marathon recovery plan eventually find their performances stagnating or end up suffering from overtraining.

To understand how to recover properly, we need to know what’s going on inside our bodies: when we subject them to the harsh demands of racing a marathon.

When running at the intensity and at the amount of time it takes to complete a marathon, we are stressing every physiological system of the body. Muscles, hormones, tendons, cells, are all being driven to a catabolic state, which is a fancy term for breaking down.

One scientific study took biopsies of the calf muscles of marathon runners and it showed that muscle power and durability were significantly impaired for up to 14 days post marathon.

In other words, it takes a full two weeks to get your muscle strength back which is a good baseline to shoot for to ensure adequate recovery.

Another byproduct of the marathon is damage to your cells. Beyond obvious muscle damage in your legs, markers of damage to cells in the heart and bones are present in your blood stream for at least 7-10 days after the race.

If you continued to train during this period, repair simply cannot take place effectively. And don’t forget about the immune system.

How many of you have gotten sick right after a race? This happens because your body is so busy fixing itself that it can only do so much at once and your immune system often gets compromised.

Immune system suppression is also a classic symptom of overtraining which can be a difficult road to come back from.

Finally, let’s talk about the mental side of recovery. If you have prepared well for a marathon, you’ve just spent the last 12-16 weeks of your life or more focusing on just this one day and now it’s over.

Whether the race or races went well or not, a chapter in your life has just ended and you’ll need some time to reflect, regroup, and recharge. There are a lot of different strategies for recovering after a marathon.

I’ll go through some of them with you. Some runners go cold turkey and do not run at all for a week or two.

I personally prefer this approach because it is a sharp contrast to what I’m used to, and it makes me miss running again.

I stay lightly active with walking or perhaps a little very slow swimming, but no running at all for a week.

When I say swimming, I really mean floating around a little bit, maybe getting in a very slow lap or two, and then spending most of the time in the hot tub.

I use this time to reflect on what I’ve been through, process how the training and the race went, examine what went right and what went wrong.

Eventually, I’ll get to the point of thinking about the next goal but most of my focus will be on experiencing what I tend to miss when I’m training so hard.

Things like lazy Sunday mornings making pancakes with my family, instead of running a long, or indulging in treats that I usually pass on.

In the second week, I’ll go out for some very short easy runs but nothing fast or long at all. The point of these runs is not for training. It’s just to flush out some of the damage cells and get the blood moving for repair.

Many runners prefer to run the very next day after a race or a few times in that first week. They say it helps preventing stiffness and they seem to feel better faster.

This can be perfectly fine if you are very gentle. But I’ve done it both ways and I prefer walking to running that first week.

Walking still moves around the blood and I feel the psychological impact of no running at all, can be very beneficial.

Back to the last part of your question. You should not be doing anything that’s too excessive such as hard efforts, strength training, or big stressful projects in the rest of your life.

Continue to eat unprocessed nutritious foods to give your body all the tools it can have, to get you back to your best.

Allowing yourself about six months between marathon like London and Chicago, is ideal for both a physical training aspect and a mental freshness point of view.

Another great thing to do while recovering? Listening to your favorite audio book on Audible thanks for sending in your question Kirsten.

Finally, a word from this week’s sponsor.

It’s just a couple more weeks until my goal marathon, but I’ve still got lots of easy miles on the schedule.

The best way that I’ve found to keep my mind off the craziness that is taper, is to relax with a good book. That’s why I love my subscription to Audible.

With Audible, I can download a thriller, listen to a cool biography, or travel to exotic lands all while getting in my long easy miles.

Right now, I’m reading a recent biography by a famous runner who left the sport in a very unusual and dark way and I’ll let you guess which one it is.

On Friday, I’ll reveal which book and you can see if you guessed right. If you’d like to check out audible on your next run, you can get a free thirty-day trial.

See if it’s right for you. Go to runnersconnect.net/audible and sign up today.

If you have a running question that you’d like answered on the show, head over to runnersconnect.net/daily and record your own.

We’d love to hear from you. Have a great run today.