A Fine Balance

One of my friends, a seasoned marathoner, warned me that serious marathon training involves constantly towing the line between being in the best shape of your life and being hit with illness, injury or burnout. I am quickly learning how right she is.

I wrote last week about my 30k Sunday run that felt relatively breezy. I thought I had recovered well,  but by Tuesday afternoon I was feeling not-quite-right. Getting caught in a torrential downpour on my Tuesday evening run sealed the deal: I spent the night and most of the next day in bed with alternating fever and chills, feeling too weak and tired to do much more than watch Downton Abbey and catch up on my celebrity gossip. It passed quickly, and I was back running hard by Friday. But it surprised me how suddenly and thoroughly I was knocked out. Maybe it would have happened regardless of the 30k ... but the timing was suspect.

More balanced than I.

I know how to run. I have plenty of experience pushing past pain to run faster times, I have long been fitting training and racing into a busy schedule, and I have a race day routine that's been set in stone for a decade. I am much less skilled in the art of rest and recovery. I probably should be better by now - after all, I've missed full seasons due to illness and injury in the past. I know I need to eat properly and sleep lots and do all my therapy and strengthening exercises to stay injury-free. But with shorter distances, I've been able to get by letting that side of things slide. (I now shudder at my varsity-athlete post-race routine, which usually involved intoxication, little to no sleep, and a run early the next morning. But my 20 year-old constitution was hardier.) With the marathon, I'm learning that failure to do all the non-running work is swiftly punished.

So, as I enter my heaviest month of training, I am going to try to take recovery as seriously as running. Many a coach and running magazine has tried to drill the importance of recovery into my head, but I'm going to try to actually take it to heart. 7-8 hours sleep a night, regular massage/ART, stretching and foam rolling every day, ice baths, resting heart rate monitoring, physio exercises, core work, post-workout protein ... I am actually going to do all of this instead of just thinking about doing it. And, with any luck, the reward will be making it to the start line healthy enough to suffer through 42.2. What a strange breed we are.

Week 10 Recap:

M: off day - yoga class
TU: 12k + core/leg work
W: off - sick
TH: off - sick
F: 14k (11k tempo)
SA: 12k + core workout
SU: 32k

Week total: approx. 70k