Breaking Down

I’ve been lagging a little bit this week on the roads, and on the blog as well. I feel like crap.

Despite how good I felt at my race last weekend, recovering from that effort has been an absolute mess. My legs feel heavy and lifeless. My entire body is sore and tense. Work stress is adding to the pile. I’m worried I left my next marathon PB in Weequahic Park.

I still have almost four weeks until the race, and only a few truly hard days before the taper starts. On the one hand, fatigue like this is the entire point of a marathon block and I have plenty of time. Looking back at my old training logs, I have certainly felt like this before.

On the other hand, if I don’t start recovering soon I might dig myself a hole I can’t climb out of by race day. I haven’t done such a big effort so far out from race day before; I usually do 3 x 4 miles three weeks out. I can’t say if the two extra weeks around 70 miles are giving me more time for a rebound, or catastrophically delaying it.

I have been running as slow as I can to avoid adding to the damage, but that raises a good question: what kind of damage is it? Are my muscles weakened by a hard half? Is it an energy availability problem? Can I solve this by cutting intensity, or do I need to swallow my pride and cut volume too? Can I sleep it off? What if I just eat more?

I’m trying to listen to my body and figure this out, but I’m also so close to the taper that I’m not sure I’ll end up doing anything differently. My tempo tomorrow is going to tell me a lot. We’ll see if I listen.

Monday: 4 miles. I felt pretty good considering my race on Sunday, just really low on energy. Took it slow.

Tuesday: 8 miles. More sore today and took it slow. Made a lot of bad excuses to not do core at lunch.

Wednesday: 6 x 600 @ 5K pace with 90 seconds rest. It took me and Wis a couple reps to find the pace here, but we ran the last 4 in 2:04 or better. Felt good to turn the legs over a bit after a lot of plodding the last few days. Strength at lunch.

Thursday: 12 miles at MLR effort. This hurt; 7:30 pace felt like pulling teeth, and the route I picked was hilly. It might have been the downhills on the way home that finally killed my legs.

Friday: 8 miles. Got out for a late lunch run amid a busy day at work. Really sore.

Saturday: 9 miles. Even more sore. Even taking it slow, this was tough.

Sunday: 16 miles. The most sore. If I weren’t running this with my friends, I might’ve stayed in bed. I had a chance to cut it short on the way home, too, and I probably should have, but I soldiered through. Spent a lot of time on the couch this afternoon. I can’t remember the last time my legs hurt this much.

This Week: 66 miles. 66 very painful miles. I really hope I don’t have to write another blog like this next week.

Baby: My son has been in a great mood lately and is getting really close to taking his first steps. He is a lot of fun right now, but it’s been hard to enjoy it because I’ve been so exhausted. One of the hardest parts of marathon training is that your family still needs you no matter how tired and stupid you are. I want to be there for them. They have been there for me in so many ways during this buildup. At the very least, I want to sharpen up and run a phenomenal race in April. They deserve it.