Post-Race Training (Feeling Good, Then Bad, Then Good Again), and First Post-Race Long Run

Last week was a weird week. Post-race weeks are always weird, but I mixed things up a lot last week.

My "normal" weeks look like this: here's the end of August this year showing what I usually do, with runs in red, bike/trainer rides in purple, and strength work in orange:

Note that I'm biking on upper body days, and doing legs the same day that I run.

Being the race was Sunday (9 days ago), I COULD have done core that day and then legs the next day and picked right up with my normal routine, but I wanted to give my legs and core a rest after being stressed in the race (as I noted in Thursday's post). So what could I do that wouldn't over-stress my post-race body? Upper body! So I shifted my strength work up by a day, and didn't do the "easier" strength days of "just core Sunday" and "just legs Monday" yesterday - I did core and legs Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and then again yesterday (Monday). And then decent upper body days on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.

The big issue ALWAYS is how well my legs will feel post race. I didn't do anything for them on Monday, and they felt quite good! And then I just had an easy swim on Tuesday. Here's what last week looked like:

Notice an "injury" note on Wednesday. My run on Wednesday went fine (on the treadmill in case something acted up), but then my left knee had some sharp pain around it the rest of the day. And then on an easy (and short) trainer ride on Thursday, my right calf/achilles had some sharp pain. So I was nervous on those 2 days. I stretched and rolled a lot to try to loosen things up.

Friday's run was outside, and it felt great! Something didn't feel totally right in the first few strides, but then everything felt fine during and after the run. I was hoping I was back to normal! And then the 70 min trainer ride on Saturday felt fine as well!

What I realized I didn't like about last week was doing my leg exercises on biking or swimming days. I won't do that regularly again. I really like (and maybe NEED) to stress my legs on the same days. I didn't like running one day (stressing my legs) and then coming back and doing leg exercises the next day (stressing my legs again) - it felt like I was pissing off my legs every day last week and not ever letting them fully rest! I'll try to stick to the old "normal" plan of running and then doing my leg work on the same day.

The biggest "am I back to normal?" test came yesterday, and I passed! Since my legs had felt great for the few days leading up to yesterday, I thought I could try a shorter/easier long run on my normal long run day. I didn't know how I'd feel, and I ran a route that I could shorten easily and be done after 5 miles if I wanted/needed to be. But my legs felt fine, and I ran a 2.5 mile warm-up, 3 SLIGHTLY harder miles in 6:49, 6:16, and 6:22 (19:27 for 3 miles, or 6:28/mile pace), and then a long cool-down circling around home a bit in case I wanted to stop if something "twinged." I ran 9.61 pain-free miles! (In 1:06:36, or at 6:26 pace.) So no more running effort this week, hopefully a normal long run next week (maybe 10-11 with 5-6 faster miles in the middle), and POSSIBLY some speed work NEXT Friday if things are feeling really good. We'll see!

Here's my TC 10 Mile race report if you missed it, a few more post-race thoughts, and some photos from my wife's 21st TC Marathon!