This article appeared in the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Marathon & Beyond
Afterlife
You’ve
Just Completed Your First, Fifth or Fiftieth Marathon.
What
Do You Do Now?
By
Dan Horvath
“Never
again.” If you’re
a marathoner, it’s more than likely that you’ve uttered those
exact two words. Whether you’ve achieved your goals, failed
miserably, or fell somewhere in between, it’s natural to have a
letdown after you finish. This is the case whether you had other
races planned, or hadn’t thought at all about any future running.
There are a few who land on their feet, and can’t wait to start
training for their next one, but for many to most of us, “never
again” is the first thought that occurs to us as we cross that
finish line, at least some of the time. It takes some period of time,
be it hours, days, weeks, or longer, before we begin to think about
what comes next. What comes next is, however, pretty important for
the future of your running career.
This
article first occurred to me when a friend finished her first
marathon, doing quite well in the process, and proceeded to ask me,
“What do I do now?” When I began to think about just how
important the answer is, it occurred to me that this is something
that all of us should consider.
So
this is all about rest and recovery, as well as post-marathon goal
setting and planning. It’s about taking stock of your achievement,
and then striving to improve, or setting some different goals and
developing a plan to achieve them.
So
now that you’ve crossed that finish line, here’s what you need to
do:
Rest
and Recover
This
is job one. No matter how you did during your race. No matter how
soon your next race will be. No matter how you felt during the race.
No matter how you feel once you’ve finished. The marathon has
beaten you up to some extent. You simply must
recover.
If
you ran strong and finished strong, you’ll need some rest, but
perhaps not as much as if you crashed and burned. If your finish,
final miles, or even entire second half conjured thoughts of the
Bataan Death March, you will need to take more time off afterward.
One rule of thumb is to take as many days to recover as there were
miles in your race, so about a month of recovery time is reasonable.
This may, but doesn’t necessarily have to mean, no running for 26
days. You should, however, at least have the attitude that you are in
recovery mode for that length of time. Here are some additional
thoughts about rest and recovery in terms of a timeline.
Within
one hour after your finish:
Walk.
Walking immediately after finishing helps stretch your strained
muscles just a bit, and helps your body to cool down gradually –
a good thing.
Drink.
Most runners will be dehydrated after a race, and need to drink
water or a sport drink afterwards. A smaller percentage of runners
will be in danger of hypnotremia, a dilution of sodium in the
bloodstream and definitely should not
drink afterwards. There is a wealth of information about
hypnotremia that will help you determine whether you may be
susceptible to it.
Eat.
As with any hard endurance effort, your body needs some amount of
carbohydrate and protein as soon as possible in order to begin
rebuilding torn or strained musculature. Eating something within 15
minutes of finishing is recommended, but any calories within the
first hour will be helpful.
Stretch.
But do so very
gently!
This will also help your muscles recover.
Soak.
What if I told you that there’s a way to immediately reduce
inflammation and jump-start recovery of your worn leg-muscles
without using drugs? Soak your legs in water as cold as you can
stand. In 2005, I participated in the Tahoe Triple, three marathons
in three consecutive days around Lake Tahoe. I learned that soaking
one’s legs in the 39F lake water right after each run was de
rigour
to enable recovery for the next day’s big effort. If you can’t
manage to find a body of cold water right after the race, do so as
soon as possible.
Get
massage. These are available in the finish area of many races.
Although these 10-minute variety massages aren’t as thorough as
the one-hour types, they can help smooth out your tired muscles.
Don’t plan on being able to get back off the table easily
afterwards.
Celebrate.
In any way you feel is appropriate. You’ve earned it.
Within
one day after your finish:
Drink.
You will most likely be dehydrated for a while. If you’re not in
danger of hypnotremia, keep right on drinking.
Eat.
You need additional protein and carbohydrates throughout the 24
hours following the race in order to continue rebuilding your
strained muscles. Especially protein.
Walk.
Don’t run, but go for a walk the following day.
Stretch.
But do it gently.
Soak.
Another bath in the evening of the race will also be helpful as
well as soothing. This one doesn’t have to be in cold water!
Within
one week after your finish:
Walk.
Walking will still be helpful in the days following your race.
Stretch.
Stretching will also be helpful in the coming days.
Get
massage. After a couple days, it’s time for a good massage. It’ll
do wonders. You’ll feel human again.
Run.
Yes, unless you’re injured or have time off planned, you can try
to run again. But do it gently. Remember the recovery rule. So no
speedwork or high mileage, thank you. By the time the following
weekend rolls around, depending on how you finished (see above) you
may feel good enough to run hard again. Resist. Yes, you may have
another race scheduled (see below) at some point, but if at all
possible, you should still take it easy.
Cross-train.
Gently. Easy cycling, swimming, even easy strength training will
actually help speed your recovery. It may even help you feel like
you’re not a total slouch (don’t worry: you aren’t anyway –
you deserved that rest).
Within
one month after your finish:
Get
massage. A second one a week or two after the first one will be
helpful as well.
Run.
After a couple weeks you can tentatively begin running hard again.
Cross-train.
You can gradually get back to the levels of these activities that
you were at prior to your race. You’ll likely find that your
fitness in these areas will come back faster than your running.
That’s
what most
of us should
do. What if you have another race in a month, a week, or, for the
truly insane, a day? You should still follow the ideas outlined above
as much as possible. You may just need to temper the ‘within one
month’ plans.
Bear
in mind that you are extremely susceptible to illness and injury and
during this recovery period. Your immune system has been stressed, so
you will not be able to fight off cold, flu, or other infections as
well as before. It’s best to avoid possible contact with sources
for such diseases by taking additional preventative measures.
Likewise, injuries are very common among runners who have recently
completed a marathon and who have begun running again. Your entire
musculoskeletal system has also been stressed and by running too hard
too soon afterwards, you’re at risk of bringing on a new injury.
The
rest and recovery information noted above is about the physiological
aspects of your post-marathon period. Psychological aspects can be
just as important. The initial euphoria may wear off rather quickly,
giving way to a let down, possibly even depression. The marathon,
including the planning, training, and the execution of the event
itself, was a huge part of your life for a long period of time. Now,
suddenly it’s over. As we said right off the bat, what do you do
now? Most importantly, devote the time and effort that you spent
preparing for your marathon on something else that’s important to
you. This may also be running-related, such as volunteering at a race
or concentrating on some other type of event or distance. Or perhaps
some aspect of your life, such as time with the family or friends had
been slightly neglected during your race build-up. Now is the time to
devote more of your time to those parts of your life.
Do
a Post Mortem
You’ve
run a marathon. Even in this day and age when lots of other folks are
doing so, there are still billions who aren’t. It’s a great
accomplishment to complete such an endeavor, no matter how you look
at it. That said, we need to note that we are going to feel much
better about some
of these efforts than others. Someone who reaches a long-standing
goal of, say, qualifying for Boston, breaking three or four hours,
placing well, etc. may be quite ecstatic afterwards. Those who crash
and burn, or otherwise miss a time goal by a little or a lot may not
be quite so happy with their effort. The former group ought to go
ahead and enjoy their celebration, while the latter group should take
solace in the fact that they’ve still accomplished and learned a
great deal. This advice is coming from someone who misses his goals
extremely often.
After
a day or two your head will be relatively clearer and you can be a
bit more objective about your run. This is the time to truly take
stock. Many of us would or should have set three goals for ourselves:
Our
“wildest dream”. A goal that appears just out of our reach but
is not completely out the question for us. For example, placing in
the top three of your age group when the best you’ve done
previously was fifth, or perhaps setting a personal best time even
when this wouldn’t have been indicated by your training. Anything
that exceeds expectations qualifies here.
The
standard doable-but-difficult goal. This can be anything from
winning the race to simply running a steady pace to making a
specific time goal. This is the attainment of exactly what you’ve
trained for.
The
acceptable goal. This is the bare minimum that you will accept,
based on your training and past performances. For most of us, this
should be to simply make it to the finish line. For the
over-achiever/type A/hyper-intense types, it may be a time goal
that’s somewhat slower than the standard-but-difficult time goal.
Now
we can ask, how did we do in terms of these goals? And more
importantly, how can we do better? Even if you didn’t explicitly
set such goals ahead of time, you can still think about your race in
these terms. You can often reconcile your effort in such a way that,
even if you missed goal 1 or 2, you may have achieved something even
greater, although possibly less tangible. Perhaps you learned how to
surge late in a race, finished your strongest last 6.2 miles ever, or
made a new friend during the run. Take it from someone who is too
often too hard on himself – it isn’t helpful to berate yourself
for not achieving some purely arbitrary goal. No matter how you did,
take gratification in your effort.
Set
Your Next Goals
We
marathoners are quintessential over-achievers. We’ve taken the
simple activity of running, something that is generally very good for
us in moderation, and taken it to extremes. Extremes that sometimes
border on being detrimental to our well-being. Most of us began
running for the health benefits as well as the social and
psychological aspects. We’ve taken this to the point where it
drives us, and our loved ones, quite mad.
Goal
setting for activities after the race is best done before
the race. This may involve planning for a second race before you’ve
completed a first one, something most of us don’t do. Presumably,
you had some kind of goal before your previous race, and you at
least, say, completed the race. Now it’s time to set or adjust your
goal(s) for your next one.
The
most important considerations are your own aspirations. If you said
“Never again”, and
still mean it
several days or weeks afterwards, then by all means don’t plan on
any future marathons. Do plan on running, and perhaps racing other
distances again someday, however. Remember: the running part is good
for you.
Time
goals are the easiest to reconcile; you either made it or you didn’t.
On the other hand, it’s been said that the clock will be your most
implacable opponent of all. It becomes excruciatingly clear whether
you’ve met a time goal or you didn’t. Placing and other goals are
a bit more difficult to quantify. Perhaps you may have wanted to win
a small race, but then noticed that Paul Tergat and Paula Radcliffe
had unexpectedly shown up at the start line. This would be a good
time to consider your second or third tier goals. But back to time,
by way of example:
Lets
say that you had a time goal for the race you’ve just completed.
One might be to qualify for Boston with a 3:40 or better, while
another may be trying to break three or four hours. Based on your
training and the timing of the previous race, let’s say you thought
that you could do it. Perhaps you were in the shape of your life.
Assuming you finished, there are three possible outcomes for the race
just completed:
You
exceeded your time goal! All you need to do now is to determine if
you are willing to place the time and effort into further
improvements, or simply assume that you’ve done the best you’ll
ever do, and set your goals accordingly. Changing your goals
completely is worth consideration now – instead of a time goal –
maybe you’ll want to place higher. Perhaps you’d like to
concentrate a different type of event.
You
barely missed your time goal. This means you performed almost as
expected and were on the right track. Many of us have been there:
you were right on pace through, say mile 21, but then the fatigue
caught up with you and your pace slowed. You probably need to only
tweak your training to enable stronger finishes or to correct other
problems.
You
were much slower than your time goal. Even in this instance, there
may have been extenuating circumstances such as terrible weather,
illness or last-minute injury. If, however, there were no such
circumstances, you may need a dose of reality. Perhaps your training
wasn’t as solid as you had thought. Can you train better without
undue risks? Or perhaps this time goal simply isn’t for you; some
people will never be able to run a marathon in that specific time,
period.
Create
a Plan
One
of the important considerations in planning your future running is
the timing. Assuming that you do
want to run another marathon some day, when should that day be? Now
that you’ve completed your marathon, done a post-mortem and set
your next goals, it’s time to create, and then execute a plan. Do
you need to improve fitness by increasing volume or intensity,
maintain your fitness level or simply avoid injury? Your plan needs
to account for it.
Training
plans are ubiquitous. Most are quite good, and work for a variety of
different runners. You need to pick and/or create one that will work
for you, as well as fit into your timing schedule. To help your
planning, reflect on such sources as “Daniels’ Running
Formula-2nd
Edition” by Jack Daniels, “Advanced Marathoning” by Pete
Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas, or Hal Higdon’s Marathon Training
Guide at www.halhigdon.com. Other options are to employ a coach (live
or online) or to simply design your own. To help you with fitting
your training plan into a schedule, I’ve fashioned some for your
consideration.
The
schedules are not full-blown training plans. They are the timeframes
with mileage guidelines for your training plans. In terms of
percentage of maximum weekly mileage or time, the schedules will give
you a framework around which to build your plan. They all show a dip
in mileage after your recent marathon and then the build-up for your
next one. The difference between them is that the dip is shorter, and
the build-up is steeper for the four and two month schedules. To use
them, first determine the highest amount of miles or time spent
running per week that you plan to achieve during the training for
your next marathon. Multiply this by the percentages along the
x-axis, and create your schedule.
Six-Month
Framework: Two or
fewer marathons a year – perhaps one in the spring and one in the
fall - work best for most marathon runners who seek optimal
performance. Allowing five or more months between these efforts gives
you the time you probably need to recover before beginning a 16 to 20
week training plan.
Four-Month
Framework: Say you
complete a marathon in May, and want to do another in September. Bear
in mind that the shorter the recovery period, the higher the risk of
injury.
Two-Month
Framework: You run
one marathon, and then need to recover, build up your mileage back up
and taper for your next one, all within about nine weeks. Now we’re
getting really risky, so proceed with caution.
Other
Frameworks: Those
of us who’ve rattled our brains from running too much may try to
run a second marathon less than two months after the first. Some of
us may even run them a couple weeks apart, or, for something like the
Tahoe Triple, only a day apart. Try scheduling rest, build-up and a
taper for that scenario. The truth is that you won’t achieve
optimal performance as well as have the least risk of injury with
anything less than five months time between efforts. This is not to
say that you shouldn’t run marathons more often; if you want to, go
ahead and have fun doing so.
Executing
Your Plan
Lance
Armstrong was interviewed immediately after the 2005 Tour de France
and was asked what he would miss the most in retirement. He probably
thought about the competition, the camaraderie, the overall
excitement. But after a moment’s thought, he said something that
was somewhat surprising. He said, “I’ll never be in this kind of
shape again in my life, and I’ll miss that the most.” When you
think about it, this is a profound and telling statement.
When
you do start training once again, don’t expect to be at the same
level of fitness that you were in during the build-up for your
marathon. Even if the time lapse between your race and your
resumption of training is short, you will notice that you can’t run
quite as fast, long or hard as you used to. This reduction in fitness
should have been built into your new plan, and should not come as a
surprise. Have confidence that your fitness level will indeed return
to, and perhaps exceed, the previous levels.
Since
you’re starting over to some extent, you may actually find yourself
thoroughly enjoying the experience of running again. Whereas it may
have seemed like work whilst in the midst of your hard training, it’s
now become fun again. There is something quite liberating about
running with drastically reduced expectations. Feel free to enjoy the
experience as you did when you first began running.
