A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right

Recovery

Even backing off and walk/running the last 6 miles of last Saturday's Marathon, Sunday Morning was the familiar sight of me walking down the stairs backwards. By Monday I had recovered to the extent that I could now go forward front ways. Went to the local pool and did about 12 laps easy swim with a combination of easy kick drills. This did wonders for the legs. Tuesday I felt good enough to go for an very easy 5 mile recovery run, same on Wednesday. Thursday saw me go for a bit longer, had planned 8 but time restrictions (collect young lad from training) meant it was cut short to 6.5 miles. Saturday came and felt adventurous and went for 12 miles. All was okay until about mile 9 when the legs were starting to feel the pace again. Cut back the pace significantly for the last 3. With hindsight maybe 8-10 miles might have been a better option. Had planned to do 4-5 miles on Sunday but the legs were telling me otherwise. Another 5 miles easy this evening and things are starting to go in the right direction. Have a planned tempo run for tomorrow but we shall see what happens.

Nighty Night

One of the biggest tools in the speeding up of my recovery has being sleep. I am trying to get in as much as possible, a solid eight hours at night and even forty winks during the day where possible. To help with this the stimulants also have to get a knock in the head to a degree, i.e. caffeine and the yellow pints. Okay I did have a few deserved scoops after Portumna, which was to be expected. Overall I am happy with my recovery but my HR readings for both resting and easy pace are still a little higher then I would like them to be.

Reflection and Going forward

While it might be easy to blame the lack of salt/electrolyte for my cramps on the day in Portumna. In truth they may only have being a contributing factor. There was other things at play in the lead up to Portumna that probably added to it. Stress, in both my personal life and work for the month of May, saw my quality of training take a dip. At the time I didn't spot that my condition had deteriorated slightly and kept pushing the pace of some runs where maybe an easy back may have yielded better results. Hard Miles, or lack off of on tired legs. My training was loosely based on run less run faster, where you Cross Train between hard sessions and do very little recovery runs on tired legs. Aerobically I benefited from this plan in that I was always fresh for the next hard session, but both mentally and physically I wasn't prepared or had forgotten what it takes to run on very tired legs for the last 6 miles of a marathon. I am going to return back to some Hadd training again and try and add in extra days recovery runs. Hopefully the added mileage occurs without picking up any niggles along the way. I have also pencilled in one of the 10 in 10 marathons and currently I am on the reserve list for EOI marathon in early August. Whether I do these marathons or not, is unclear at the moment so I will leave that decision until nearer the day. If I do them they will be at a recovery pace (4:30 to 5:00), after which I will access where I am at in mid august to see if another stab at Boston Qualifier is in the legs.

June 18th  
          5 Miles Recovery 45:56 @ 9:12 HR 140

June 19th  
          5 Miles Recovery 46:06 @ 9:14 HR 140

June 20th  
          6.5 Miles Recovery 1:00:00 @ 9:14 HR 140

June 22nd 
       12 Miles Long Recovery 1:48:34 @  9:03 pace, HR 143      

June 25th  
          5 Miles Recovery 45:59 @ 9:12 HR 140