Recovery Time

It's now been two weeks since the Champoeg Half-Marathon. The recovery process has been a new experience for me. As I think I mentioned in the recap post, later on in the day after the race I felt completely drained of energy, nutrition, mental energy, everything. Sunday was a bit better and by Monday morning I was ready to go again. Mentally. Physically, not so much.

I finally ventured out for a short 3-mile run on Wednesday night. The first two miles were miserable. My knees and shins ached and I felt like I was wearing lead pants, my legs felt so heavy. I iced a few joints and mucles that night and felt alright by the time I bed. The next day I ran 8 miles (more on this run in a separate post), but still didn't feel quite right physically.

I didn't actually run again until Wednesday of this week, when I did a 5-miler from my office back to my house. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but something feels different. I don't know if my form is different or what it is, but even on short runs, by the time I'm done my calves feel like they are going to explode and I spend the rest of the day and next morning gingerly walking around. This wasn't something I had experienced prior to Champoeg. So I'm monitoring it. Lots of icing. Lots of stretching.

Nutritionally, I've been craving fats, oils and proteins the last two weeks. Three things I didn't care for or like to have much of in my system prior to Champoeg. This has resulted in more eggs, cheese, nuts and seeds being consumed and less pasta and fruit. I don't expect this to last too long, but it makes sense to me that my body is asking for these things as part of a rebuilding process.

So what to do now? June is still a LONG time away it seems like. An entire rainey-windy-miserable Oregon winter away, in fact. I knew I had a problem when I struggled to find motivation to go run last week (the day I ran the 8 miles actually). Once I was out and going I was fine. I've got to find some way to keep my runs interesting (new routes? shorter speed runs? hills?) and effective. They need to have some purpose. I'm working on changing things up a bit, knowing that the more options and variety I have, the quicker the winter will go by. I have to find something to push me, something kicking my butt out the door even if the weather sucks. I need some new challenge as the next step towards ultimately running the marathon in June.

Of course, there's always the Run Like Hell half-marathon in Bend on October 31st...