So how long does it take to recover from an ultra?
My first ultra (50m) was 5/15. I'm still struggling (to say the least) to get in any quality.
thoughts?
I ran a 100 km in April 2010, thought I would be OK and ran 23 miles 2 weeks after the event, pulled a swathe of muscles in my calf and thigh jumping down from a stile. I was out of action for a further 9 days.
There is no fixed rule of when and how long, usual piece of advice is not to race for the the number of days that there are miles in the race ( 50 miles = 50 days rest) but that gets a bit misty as the distances go up.
I can see no reason why you can't go out now....very gently and get a feel of what is going on with your body. The stress is on gentle you will be surprised what the race will have taken out of you physically. Your body takes a kicking over that distance so take another week of gentle, middle distance stuff and then build up slowly, it took me 3-4 weeks before I felt comfy in a 50 mile week but I built up over 3 weeks.
Don't panic, the quality will come, just let your body repair, it has done a lot recently
Jerry A runners blog-updated daily
There's an ancient Ultra list post from Karl King (Succeed S! Caps) that suggests 4 weeks to full recovery -- complete healing of muscle fibers. Pfitzinger suggests 3+ weeks for marathon recovery, with a lot of variability in that '+'. His Advanced Marathoning plans call for about 4 weeks to get back to normal mileage. There's also some debate about letting the endocrine system recover for those new to ultra distance, like 4-6 weeks, before doing multi-hour workouts and/or the next ultramarathon. There are also variables like how well trained you were going into the race, how many times you have raced that far, and how hard you pushed yourself during the race. Jerry's unfortunate experience shows that you are perhaps right in the middle of the danger zone: feeling strong and rested enough for a quality or long workout but being very susceptible to injury or illness. If you have tried a quality workout and it was a major struggle, then you need more time. First 50 miler on a tough course, yeah, you probably need four weeks or more until things will return to normal, and maybe another four weeks beyond that to start serious training for the next adventure.
A very informative series on Matt Carpenter's course record SJS 50 and struggle with Leadville '04, and still-standing course record in '05 can be found here. If one of the most gifted mountain runners in the world couldn't recover from a 50 miler in 8 weeks, what does that say for the rest of us mere mortals?
What's wrong with taking another week or two of easy running (< 90 minutes/day) to get your base back to pre-taper level and then working in tempo runs first and speedier intervals later?
Thank you for the responses fellas. Carpenter's article really drove your points home. I usually feel pretty good a couple weeks after a marathon. I made the mistake of thinking this 50 miler wouldn't be much different. A few months ago I registered for a marathon on 6/25. I was hoping to get 4-6 good speed workouts in after the ultra, and before a short marathon taper. Thus, the reason for my impatience.
I tried an 8 mile race 2 weeks post ultra. I tried an interval session 3 days later. Both were awfully miserable.
It's always tough to tell if I'm training too hard or if sleep is the issue. I work an unusual rotation that has me sleeping during the day for 4-5 days, then switching and sleeping at night for 4-5 days. There's no way around the terrible sleep schedule. Thanks for confirming what my simple mind suspected. Hopefully things turn for the better soon.
Thanks Scott, there is some good reading there.
Talking of weariness and depletion of quality, here was make on yesterday's run the quality was not there so I thought why beat myself up and went back home, had a cup of tea, a hot bath and relaxed.
After my last big challenge I went to the sports physio, a fellow club runner, and he went through my running regime and was absolutely amazed what we guys put ourselves through and we forget that although we maybe mentally tough we often forget that our bodies are not as tough as we like them to be. I often feel that I can push on through but then have a Forrest Gump moment, after all I have a daytime job and I have to be able to get up each day to do that. That £40 spent on getting my legs massaged certainly helped my recovery, agony but my muscle were like jelly (jello?) by the end
I am going to rest up for a little bit, treat this as a Cycle Down week, refresh myself and the build up again. As Scott says, take a week or two, your fitness will not drop dramatically and enjoy the shorter runs, eat and drink well.
I'm noboby, who are you?
So how long does it take to recover from an ultra? My first ultra (50m) was 5/15. I'm still struggling (to say the least) to get in any quality. thoughts?
There is no chart and if there is one, it is based off averages, and of little value.
Recover time is simple yet complicated. Using an overly simplistic statement, it is proportional to your training quality. The more well trained you are, the faster your recovery and the corollary,, minimal training will cause longer recovery. Where you fit in this sliding scale is an abyss without dissecting your training and mapping it against the race.
I'm not suggesting you do this here but to go back through your log(or mind) and focus on how your training fit the race. look at how much elevation was in race and how much did you do in training. How many long runs and how many hours. Simple miles is not a useful metric.
In addition, how much recovery time did you allow before you jumped back into training. If you don't fully recover you will continue us spin your wheels.