Recovery Post-Marathon

Audio Transcript

Coach Michael: Hey Runner Connect fans. Welcome to the Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast. I’m here to answer your training and racing questions.

Today’s question comes from Richard.

Richard: I did a marathon over the weekend. What do you think is the best way to get over a marathon quickly and get back into medium to long mileage?

Michael: That’s a great question Richard because it’s so relevant right now, coming off the Marine Corps Marathon, New York City, all these big races.

This is a great time to be talking about how do you properly recover after a marathon and how do you get back to training as that’s what, so many people want to do.

As you’ll learn over the next few minutes rest, is incredibly important. The break after running a marathon is extremely important.

I want to start off with a little bit of science behind it just because I think that will lay the groundwork of what we talk about after that.

A few different aspects here you’ve got the skeletal system, cellular damage, and the immune system.

About skeletal system, a study was carried out for calf muscles of marathon runners and it showed that both the intensive training for and the actual marathon itself, induce inflammation and muscle fiber necrosis, that significantly impaired muscle power and durability for up to 14 days after the marathon.

That’s two weeks after the marathon that these runner’s calf muscles were still showing inflammation. That’s obviously a very serious issue.

Talking about cellular damage, one study concluded that the cellular damage persisted more than seven days post marathon.

Another study showed the presence of Mio globin in the bloodstream post marathon for 3-4 days. That’s a lot of time there’s a lot of cellular damage in your body and it shows you can’t just get right back to running.

Looking at the immune system, suppressed immune system is one of the main causes of overtraining. I think we all look at everything from a very muscular standpoint and looking at the body and injuries, but your main system huge.

A recent study showed that the immune system is compromised up to 3 days post marathon in it also is a major factor in overtraining syndrome.

Keeping your immune system healthy is incredibly important and you got to let it rest after a marathon.

That’s talking about resting the body, but what about resting the mind? The grind of marathon training is very difficult.

There’s a lot of a lot of running that goes into it, a lot of hours, a lot of time spent running, stretching, doing strength training, doing cross training, making sure you get to bed on time, eating right, a lot of things going to it from a mental standpoint.

I think that honestly resting your mind in my opinion, is equally as important as resting your body. You need that rest. Your mind needs a break from the grind of training.

Even if your body feels fantastic, if 7 days after a marathon this happens, I will still tell them we just need more time from a mental standpoint. I think it’s great to take a real break and just relax. That’s very important as well.

It’s a good time to let injuries heal. Often you go into a marathon and even though you taper down that last month or two of the real heavy marathon training, a little injury popped up.

Little injuries will pop up during marathon training and the problem is you can’t appropriately rest the injury because you’re training for the marathon.

You’ve entered this marathon, you’ve spent the money, booked the plane ticket, the hotel, you’ve got family coming, you’re committed, and you have to run.

That’s where it’s really tough to give your body the appropriate rest, give that injury that injured area the appropriate rest it needs.

As important as strength work isn’t all that, ultimately an injury really does need rest. This is a great opportunity to do that and it’s also a good time to implement some very specific strength work.

Let’s say you develop an IT band injury or a hip injury late in marathon training, that’s close if you’ve been training for several months for that marathon, to start implementing a whole new strength training regimen, specifically for that.

Normally most people just suck it up, take ibuprofen and gut it out for the race. After that race is a great time to start getting in some good strength work.

Work on your hip flexibility, hip strength, glutes, all of that.

It’s a great time to implement some of that, but I will say you want to make sure you wait at least one week after the marathon. You want to have a week of real rest.

You don’t want to be immediately gained all the strength work anything like that.

After a week, then you can implement those strength routines to help get those injuries better and get yourself stronger.

We like to implement a three week marathon recovery plan. If you’re talking about just running, not really looking at cross train or anything like that, basically we’ll prescribe one week essentially completely off.

I mean hardly any running at all.

Most of the time no running whatsoever. If there’s any running, we’re talking like a 15 minute trot, absolutely as low as you can go, but more often we take a complete rest.

Take a hot shower, do some contrasting which is where you basically do alternate between hot and cold about five minutes each, whatever you can do to get more blood in your legs and get that recovery boosted.

Then after that week, we’re going to do one week of very light running. We’re talking like 2-4 miles maybe by the end of the week.

When you’re going to the point where you’re just about two weeks out maybe you’re getting up to like a 6-8 mile run at the most and just light, very easy, no pace prescribed, no strides, nothing like that, just easy running.

In that third week, this is where we’re gearing things up to get back into training. If the individual does want to get back into an actual cycle after that, we’ll do like a very low mileage week.

Still all easy runs, maybe we’ll throw some strides in there, maybe not, depending on how the individual is recovering. Either way, we’re just talking about some very light running, a low mileage week for you normally.

Let’s say you’re in normal marathon training and you decide to take it down week. This would basically be like one of those down weeks. Probably a little less if you’re a high mileage person, your down week might be 40 miles.

Obviously, we’re not going to be 40 miles this close to the marathon.

Either way it’s just a very low mileage week, nice easy runs maybe some strides, to get your body ready for what’s going to come in the weeks after.

I’m a big proponent of what’s called active rest. Active rest means that you’re resting from running, but you can get some other stuff in. This is where you’re talking about your cross training.

I think it’s a great opportunity to do some things that you wouldn’t during marathon training.

Go on a long hike, mountain biking, go on a long road bike session, other things that you just wouldn’t really do during training. Whatever it is that you want to do, this is a great time to do it.

That active rest can help you because the last thing you want to do, after a marathon also is you don’t want to go the opposite way. You don’t want to do nothing you don’t want to go be a total couch potato for a month after a marathon.

When you get back into it, that’s when we see injuries, especially after long breaks of no running at all. When you jump back into it and your tendons just aren’t ready their muscles aren’t ready for what you’re given it.

You want to be doing something and I think that’s where that active rest, cross training other types of exercise, are a great thing to do during this time. In short, don’t rush to come back you need a break.

Runner Connect fans, that’s it for today. Thank you so much for joining me this week. I had a lot of fun. Don’t forget to submit your questions at runnersconnect.net/daily and we’ll feature a question on the show.