Post-marathon time is often a time of riding the high of your accomplishment, reflecting on what went wrong and what went right, resting those tired legs, and perhaps deciding to retire from said marathon distance or perusing for future races. You may also find yourself feeling a little lost without all those training miles, and perhaps still eating all those yummy carbs. It’s natural after your 26.2 mile journey to go through a few weeks of transition.
Despite your enthusiasm to get back out and running, allow your legs to rest. Even though you may feel decent, many little micro tears in your muscles are healing. Your body and brain will thank you for the break. A few weeks of rest or easy cross training is the best thing you can do for your legs.
Spend this time going over your marathon experience. There are lessons that can be learned from every marathon. I find the greatest lessons come from the marathons that disappoint than those that go according to plan. Mistakes are the greatest learning lessons, as long as you LEARN from them. Perhaps you didn’t take the proper taper, or you wore something new on race day and it backfired, you made poor fueling choices, or you abandoned your plan and took the early miles too fast – those are all common mistakes, and mistakes that shouldn’t be made twice.
The “off-season” can be a great time to work on your weaknesses. Strength training, rebooting your nutrition, shedding a few pounds, rehabbing a nagging injury, trying a new sport or hobby – don’t view this part of training as a bad thing, it’s the chance to improve.
If you are eager to sign up for a new race, be sure to give yourself plenty of time to recover and build some base mileage before hopping back into intense training. Being too eager can increase injury risk. Your body and brain both need to be on board – not just your brain. When searching for a race, think about what you loved about your recent one and what perhaps you wish it had. With all the race options these days, you are bound to find the perfect fit. When searching for your next race, think about your goals and how to find the perfect complement to your needs, goals and race-day dreams.
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