Back on track

My recovery is progressing nicely as I start to build (and taper!) towards the Edinburgh Marathon in 3 weeks time.

I've just done my first bit of speedwork since London: 8x400m at 10k pace with 100m jog recoveries, followed by 4x300m at 5k pace with 100m walk recoveries. I confess I was making it up on the spot as I had no idea how I would feel. There's no doubt I still have a touch of marathon in my legs, but what a contrast to earlier in the week:

On Monday, 15 days after London, I felt awful. I had done a very gentle 8 miles the previous day, my first longish run since the marathon, and had felt OK, but later on that day was starting to feel really tired. By Monday I was a complete zombie. OK, my flesh wasn't grey and putrid, but I did get a strange desire to eat my colleague's brain after a difficult meeting. My higher thought processes seemed absent and I spent much of the day staring blankly at a computer screen. (Please stifle any urge to say "So what's new?"!)

How could I feel so bad so suddenly? I'd rested for a week, and then introduced gentle running on alternate days, no more than 5 miles at a time, before doing that gentle 8 miles: pretty much my usual plan for marathon recovery. After 2 weeks I'd usually expect to start feeling better, but here I was thinking there was something wrong with me.

What a contrast the following day though!

I made sure I had nearly 10 hours sleep on Monday night; I've been typically getting at least 9 hours a night since the marathon. On the Tuesday I was feeling much better. I even managed a couple of near-marathon-effort miles in the Tuesday night club run. Things were looking up!

By Wednesday I was feeling generally OK - quite a turn around.

So for the record, it's taken me 17 days to feel like I'm back to normal.

The caveat of course is that I still have the marathon in my legs and don't expect to be back at my best for at least another week, but at least I've got over the general malaise that always dogs me post-marathon.

So having originally thought that this marathon had hit me harder than any of my previous marathons, in fact it's pretty much the same recovery time, albeit with 'Black Monday' thrown in to the mix!

And so to Edinburgh...