So what is the best way to recover from a marathon, and how have I been recovering from my marathon?
For the best and fastest recovery I would go with the ice bath 10min after finishing, followed by a good sports massage. Now I don't know about you, but my balls would freeze if I ever got into an ice bath, so I picked up a piece of ice at the Coke stand and gave my quads a good ice rub. Then I headed for the VOB (my Club) tent and sat down with a couple to many beers...
I was really quite good and didn't do any exercise on the Sunday (it was raining or I would have been out on the bike.) So Monday I was back at the club for my first recovery run!!! No warm up just 11 x 100m ok I did walk to the start. I wasn't running fast, I was just stretching the legs and all I really wanted to do was break 20sec. (I might have been a little faster). Tuesday was more of the same, but only 10 of them. My legs were starting to feel like normal.
Wednesday called for something different so I popped up to VOB to help one of my athletes break 18min for the 5km TT. I could write a long story about how we went out fast and how he was toast as we climbed the hill, but I finished with 17:55 while he was 2 sec back under 18min, he was happy...
I was going to get back into things on the weekend, but on Saturday I had to go wine tasting at 08h30 so I took the dogs for a walk and ran 2.5km with them in all of 20min... While the afternoon was spent up a tree!!! (pruning) Then in the evening we had our end of year function, and after a couple of hours of cross-training on the dance floor, I took my wife home for a well earned rest.
Tomorrow is the start of a new week, and training will start again...