Apologies for the lack of recent posts. Preparation for, and then participation in, the 7 in 7 took up a lot of my time, leaving me behind with household chores and admin, and seriously in debt for spending some time with my family, so I have been playing catch-up.
Additionally, my recovery post-event has meant a complete lack of long runs... and it is normally out on long runs on my own that I formulate the idea for the next post... no long runs = no ideas!! So how has my recovery looked? Well, the first week was odd... I didn't ache, and I wasn't actually stiff, which was in itself quite weird, but my legs were definitely like lead. In the week after the last run, I got out for a steady walk around the block a number of times and this helped to keep the heaviness at bay. On the Tuesday and Thursday, I did a gym workout - chiefly upper body plus 40 mins gently spinning on the bike, which I hoped would help to get the circulation to the tired muscles. By the end of the week, I was chewing my knuckles wanting to get out and run, but I knew it would do me no favours and so resisted. My first 'run' was on the following Monday. It was a short, very slow plod around a two mile circuit and my legs felt like they had been switched with someone else's. My feet slapped the pavement the whole two miles! It would be true to say my runs on that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning were pretty loveless! On the Wednesday afternoon, I had a sports massage booked - my therapist spent a whole hour working all of the leg muscles top to bottom, front and back. There were a couple of areas of tenderness (IT Band... pass the leather strap to chew on!!!) but it was nowhere near as bad as I had anticipated, and no real horror stories. As expected, I then spent a couple of days feeling like I had been run over by a steam train - if you've never had a sports massage, trust me when I say that's normal! By the Friday, I was able to get out and run normally again... the bounce felt like it was returning to my legs. It was time to start adding some mileage... So last week was all about consistently running around 4-5 miles per day which was going great until Friday, when I started to develop mild symptoms of a chest and sinus infection. Time to slam on the brakes and take a few days off!! It's not unusual for me to pick something like this up in the couple of weeks post-marathon, so I knew that I would do best to rest and allow my body to fight it. Incidentally, for those reading this who want to get a bit more understanding of resting heart rates, they are a pretty good indicator of your health status. Generally, in terms of fitness, a lower resting rate is indicative of a well-trained cardio-vascular system. Regardless of the actual figure though, a deviation (normally upwards) from that norm, can indicate a problem - generally either illness or overtraining. My norm is currently around 56 or 57 beats per minute. On Friday, it jumped to 59, then to 61 on Saturday and 63 on Sunday, peaking at 64 yesterday (a deviation of 7 or 8 beats from the norm). I probably felt at my worst on Sunday and Monday. Today (Tuesday), I feel considerably better, and my resting heart rate is dropping (currently at 62 beats per minute), so I'm hoping that it has now run its course... fingers crossed! I always tell my PT clients to keep an eye on the resting rate, as it is normally the first indicator that they may need to back off on training... often before they even feel the symptoms of the impending illness. It is easy for me to keep an eye on mine as I have a fitness tracker with 24 hour-a-day heart rate monitoring. If you don't have this, then just a single measurement of your pulse first thing every morning, before you get out of bed, will help you start to gauge your own 'normal' and 'abnormal' levels (find your pulse point at your neck or wrist and count the beats for 1 minute (or for 15 seconds and multiply by 4)). You never know, it may save you a lot of grief!
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