Recovering From A Full Marathon

A day after running my first marathon, I expected the worst. I was prepared to stay in bed because friends warned me it's highly possible I will NOT be able to walk because every single muscle would be aching like hell.

I ran for almost 6 hours and a half. I covered 42+ kilometers. I honestly would not expect my muscles to be that forgiving. So I readied myself.

Lucky for us commuting runners, we had friends who volunteered to drive us home. So before lunchtime we were already lying in bed and resting. The hubs wasn't very lucky because he vomited twice before we got home. It caused me and our friends to panic (we almost brought him to Asian Hospital) but luckily around 9am, there were still some medics left on the Condura Skyway Marathon Village so we had them take his blood pressure just to be sure. It was normal at 110/80. We were advised to get him home to rest as soon as possible. The day before, while I was able to get at least 3 hours of sleep, the husband did not. He just couldn't sleep. So I relented. Let him be. The following day, his body wasn't as forgiving as me. Exhaustion hit him hard.

Our recovery plan included a serving a chocolate milk right after the race, lots and lots of water, an ice bath, at least 8 hours of uninterrupted shut-eye and a full body massage. I was able to get everything except for the chocolate milk. I totally forgot I packed some. I guess, I was just too overwhelmed with finishing the race everything after that was just going by like a blur.

the water was really ice cold i had to take my feet off every so often.
but it did its magic with keeping the swelling muscles at bay.
earlier that day, I already iced my knees.

Did all that work? Yes, it did! While I was ready to embrace the worst impact the day after the race, I surprisingly was walking. Walking with a limp but compared to how I was last year after finishing my first half marathon, I was way better this time. I was even able to report to work and climb 4 flights of stairs as my office is located at the 3/F of our building and we had no service elevator to take us up. My knees also surprisingly were never painful this whole time. So I only had to deal with muscle pain and not the joints.

The hubby recovered just as fast as I did too. I guess, everything just worked well this time. Apart from us not finishing as we targeted I think I can say we did extremely well as first timers. No injuries was way better than a fast but unsustainable finish. 

By day 3 (post-marathon), I was able to do a 30-minute easy recovery run (at 7:14/km pace). My thigh muscles complained a bit, but as I am typing this, I can honestly say there was no trace of an ache. The foot that used to ache when we were training wasn't even painful at all. I guess, trading my favorite Adidas shoes to a new pair of New Balance 1090's also helped bring me to the finish line. 

I can't wait to start training again. Our friends and I are talking about running our next marathon at a bigger race event by the end of this year. I hope I can clock in a better time then. I have roughly about 11 months to make that happen. Hopefully, I now have better discipline. And more determination than ever before. Wish us luck!

i still had my cup of ice cold milo later that day. so good.

What To Do (and some I did) After A Long Distance Run

It's a Monday and I'm at work (why shouldn't I be?). I climbed 3 floors (4 flights to be exact) to get to the office (yes, we do not have an elevator because we're health buffs like that lolz). There is nothing new to that except that yesterday, I just ran my first half-marathon. I'm sore. My knees are still wobbly and weak. I can still feel pain on the spot where I experienced the cramp yesterday.

But all that is not an excuse for me to miss work so I dragged my butt off the bed, fixed our breakfast (which was superb by the way) and went to work. I wasn't even too tired so I didn't bother getting a shut-eye on the shuttle bus ride to my workplace. I decided to just enjoy my running playlist again and imagine how great it feels like running on a Sunday morning. (ahhhh i am obviously officially over the heels hooked on this now)

So anyways, as I was wincing my way up the stairs, I thought I'm quite getting better at this. The climb up wasn't as painful as my previous post-running experiences. After my 16k stint last July, I wasn't able to get to work because I could hardly walk. But yesterday, I was doing really good. I was even able to do some laundry work since our househelp is currently on vacation. And I cooked all our meals (well we also ordered take out). I am starting to believe I must have done some things right this time to deserve some time major pain time off. So what exactly did I do?