Listen to the Experts
Running coaches, elite runners, running “experts” - most of them will tell us that the approximate recovery time after a hard race is one day per mile. That doesn’t mean you should not run for 26 days after a marathon - it means that you should probably refrain from really hard or really long workouts.
After the initial soreness wears off - usually in 4-5 days after a marathon, you sort of feel like you can get back out there and put in a hard workout or long run only to find that your legs just don’t have the zip they did before the race.
And, when you do try to get back into your hard training too soon, it can be frustrating because you think you should be running faster because you feel “fine.”
Last weekend, I ran a 1/2 marathon (I planned to do it as a training run - nothing hard). Whether I wanted to take it easy or not, I found I still had heavy legs, and it just wasn’t as “easy” as I had planned it to be for a pleasant training run.
But today was a different story. I went out for a 5-mile run, and it was the best run I’ve had since before the marathon - 25 days ago! Hmmm…the experts say one day per mile of recovery. I guess that’s why they’re experts!