My Hartford Marathon, the unabridged version (Read 731 times)

Mikey, I wonder if you could say something about how you plan on going about your recovery--both physically and mentally? I think that I messed mine up royally (in part due to the "race" to 2000 miles) and am still, 6 months later, paying the price.

Good question. The physical part will be easy. I don't have any goal races on the calendar and I'm not planning to do any structured "training" for a few weeks. I'll probably go for an easy shakeout cruise tomorrow morning, which would be my first run since Saturday, then take it day-to-day. I actually feel pretty good today, all things considered. I'm sore, for sure, but I can walk down stairs and move around fine. Once I get back to running pretty much every day and have a couple weeks of easy mileage under my belt, I'll reassess. I normally consider the time between THanksgiving and New Years to be my vacation from training--I let myself slack off and regenerate during that time and just run when I feel like it. So I may try and squeeze a couple more races in between now and then before calling it a season--or I might just shut it down now. I have to see how my body responds. Mentally there is more uncertainty. I'm searching for a job right now--it's a long story and I'll spare you all the details but over the last few weeks, things went badly south at my current employer and a new position that was being created for me didn't happen, etc. etc. Life in startup land. Bottom line is I'm leaving and need to find a new gig pretty quickly, within a couple months. So the job search is my top priority right now and any running goals are sort of on hold until I can get that squared away and figure out what my new work schedule will look like. A few of the gigs I'm looking at would involve working from home, but more travel--so there's pluses and minuses for training and I'll have to wait and see before setting any long range running goals.

Maybe that's what kept you from 2:50, instead of general shape.

It's tempting to think so, but honestly don't think it had anything to do with it. Aside from trying to cram my marathon training into basically two months, I think my biggest deficiency was a lack of all-out races during build up. I didn't do enough racing early enough in my build up to a.) get the maximum training benefit from them, and b.) get an actual gauge of my fitness. Because what races I did do came so late, I couldn't race them all out. Some of this was out of my control and was just the way things worked out, but that's my analysis.

Congrats Mikey! What a great race report and such a fantastic time. I have so much to learn from you all!

Hey Mike, just proud to be on the same board with you. Nice job on the PR, no use in smashing the old one, just shave some off each time out... you know, eat all the candy on Halloween night will leave you wanting before the stomach ache goes away...eat a little at a time and you're good till Christmas! Good luck on the search, Lynn B

Man, you are fast! I guess it's those Nike Air Mikeys.

Damn, Deb, I'm glad I took out the really sappy parts at the end. Plus you could have had a field day psychoanalyzing me with some of that...

Dynamite report.. thanks for sharing and congrats!