William's Get Me Ready Thread
Patrick -
Well here we are. I finished KS 70.3 yesterday (June 9) and have Grandma's Marathon June 22, so I have to manage recovery and get ready for that. Obviously I know it won't be completely ideal, but still want to make the best of the situation.
About the 70.3: I had a solid race. About half way through the bike, my right medial quad (vastus medialis) suddenly started to hurt a lot like I had strained/pulled it. This served like a "governor" on the bike; I had to hold back a bit in order to not make it worse, get through the run, and not have done something terrible to myself that would put me out for a while. As it turned out, it didn't bother me on the run. This morning, I am stiff and sore, but that muscle isn't worse than anything else. There wasn't anyone within reach of me on the run in the last mile or two, so I ran solid, but didn't completely turn myself inside out at the end, in large part so that I would be able to race the marathon a couple weeks later.
My experience is that I'm on the slightly above average length of time to recuperate on your normal scales that you put out. (Probably reasonable, given my age.) I'd expect that your usual "recovery after a half" advice to apply to me, with the "more or less back to normal" day being probably next Sunday (June 16), maybe Saturday (June 15).
So what do I do in the next couple weeks? Running this week on the weekdays seems like it would probably be counterproductive. Not sure that I'd get anything out of a bike except active recovery until next weekend either. I could almost certainly get some actual aerobic work in in the pool within a couple days if you think that just getting in 90 minutes of aerobic whatever is a good idea.
Thanks for your advice.
While I am at it... 90 min half six weeks ago, and 1:36 half at KS yesterday... I was thinking of running with (or at least near) the 3:15 pace group and seeing how it goes at the marathon. It's a big race (10,000+). Sound reasonable? Or too aggressive?
Comments
I say that you chill it until Wednesday, when you can do an easy spin. I would suggest water running on Thurs & Friday, followed by a nice aerobic bike on Saturday (Call it 2-2.5 hours, all Z1), then Sunday OFF.
Then in the final week, we can have you stretch your legs a bit with some pick ups and swimming to stay aerobic during the taper (Think Monday / Wed / Fri are short runs, tues/thurs are off / swim).
Remember all your recovery stuff matters until a week after the race, so keep up all that geek stuff!!!
How you pace the run on race day is largely due to the conditions. If weather looks perfect you can roll the dice...if hot, you should be conservative. Also worthwhile looking at your carb load / pre-hyrdration strategy as you will be "lower" than normal given what you just did (congrats again).
Keep us posted!
This may be a stupid question, but I've never done water running. What does that entail?
I'm going to be Sherpa on Sunday. Just found out the date on this local Sprint tri that I can take my almost-13s twins to. Gonna be a blast. I have done that race before and it's a lot of fun. I have an excuse not to do it this time and just watch them. :-)
And on conditions, yes, of course you're right. Duluth is so far north that this race traditionally has very moderate weather even in June. They don't even start it all that early (though I wish they would...that seems like good insurance.). It's actually a very popular one for people to try to BQ for that reason....sort of like Chicago is because it's so flat. Anyway, we'll see how it develops, of course.
I will probably go to the pool tomorrow, weather allowing, to get some active recovery...and I'm happy to just do some easy and eventually a little harder swimming for a while...not sure when to start invoking easy biking or running in these circumstances. I'd appreciate your thoughts. Maybe treat this like an IM recovery?
Last week (second week out from marathon), I swam and stretched pretty consistently. I had no physical symptoms (pain, excessive fatigue, etc) during day-to-day life, so I had been pretty optimistic about a bike ride that I did for today (15 days out). I planned for a 2 hour ride, hoping it would be something that could be pretty close to a normal 80%-ish ABP ride.
As things went, though, it was a 2 hour Zone 1 ride. I *could* have pushed that hard (80% range), but it would have been a pretty extraordinary effort, and that seemed counterproductive to getting going on all cylinders again.
I've decided (or at least acceded to the fact) that I need to put off making hard fall plans until I'm really back in the saddle, so I can see how many weeks are available before xyz event.
I am thinking that it's still probably reasonable to start doing a couple easy runs and a couple easy bikes this week (Week 3 out from the marathon), but please let me know your thoughts. I'm having no problem swimming relatively hard at this stage.
I knew better than to push, and I suppose I take a strange comfort in you telling me it was a dumb idea. Makes me feel less inadequate. :-)