Marathon Monday: Marathon Recovery

Marathon Recovery

Congratulations! You just finished a marathon. You trained for months, focused closely on your nutrition, sleep, and recovery, and then ran for 26.2 miles as fast as you could. Now, before you sign up for another race, it’s time to recover.

Whether you ran your first or your fifteenth, whether you finished in three hours or six hours, and whether it was smooth sailing for the entire race or you encountered GI issues or muscle cramps, 26.2 miles takes a huge toll on your muscles, hormones, immune system, and entire body. Once you cross that finish line, your goal shifts from training from a marathon to recovering for a marathon.

Here’s the thing many of us don’t want to hear: recovery requires several days, even up to two weeks, off of running. Recovery certainly is easier than training, but it requires just as much discipline as training. By emphasizing your recovery after a marathon, you will reduce future risk of injury, prevent overtraining, and boost your immune system.

Marathon Recovery

Immediately after the Race

As soon as you finish the race, you should focus on getting water, electrolytes, and food. Many runners, myself included, struggle to take in food immediately after a race, so wait a few minutes, drink some water, let your heart rate return to normal and your adrenaline levels stabilize, and then eat whatever appeals to you. Calories, not overall nutrition, are what matter after a marathon. Fruit, bagels, granola bars, and many other common finish line foods are good options for a quick source of carbohydrates.

A short walk after the race may seem like the last thing you want to do, but it will aid in promoting good blood circulation, easing post-race nausea, reducing soreness, and returning your body to homeostasis. This doesn’t have to be a long or strenuous walk by any means; many big city races include long chutes at the finishing line that runners must walk through for several hundred meters, you may walk a few blocks to where you parked, or walk around the city to find food after the race.

Once you’ve eaten and showered, spend some time focusing on releasing muscular tension and starting the recovery process. You could take an ice bath or epsom salt bath, elevate your legs against the wall, or foam roll. These may not feel comfortable at the moment, but your body will thank you later.

The Week After the Race

Don’t run. Even elite athletes like Shalane Flanagan and Desi Davila take a full one to two weeks off after their marathons. You may think that continuing to train after your marathon will capitalize on your peak fitness and help you progress even further, but at this point, you are putting yourself at risk of overtraining or injury.

This article from Runner’s Connect will walk you through exactly how running a marathon affects your muscles, your cells, and your immunity. Essentially, running a marathon causes inflammation in your muscles and cellular damage in some of your muscle fibers. While this damage is not severe enough to prevent you from running marathons, you will experience a loss of muscle power and durability in the weeks after a marathon. This damage and inflammation is why you feel overwhelmingly sore and stiff after your race. The best way to recover from this? Rest.

In the three to four days immediately after a marathon, you want to rest as much as possible. Walks will continue to help promote circulation and flush out your legs and hatha and yin yoga will stretch fatigued muscles, but any cross-training beyond that is not advised. Why? The physiological stress of the marathon caused damage to your muscles and left waste product from the sustained effort in your blood, and these effects can linger for up to 72 hours after you cross the finish line. However, you do not experience any soreness from these, so you may feel great in the days after the marathon but still be experiencing cellular damage that you want to let recover before you begin running again.

You may have heard of or experienced first-hand the post-marathon cold. After you a run a marathon, your immune system is suppressed as your body focuses its resources on repairing your muscles. When your immune system is down, your risk of overtraining increases if you continue to exercises; by waiting until your immune system has returned to normal, you reduce your chances of overtraining and overuse injury. Overtraining and injuries can take a long time to recover from. Needless to say, a few self-imposed rest days are much preferable to being sidelined for weeks because of overtraining or injury.

Of course, runners with a higher mileage base and more experience in racing the marathon may return to easy running within a few days after a marathon. 

After one to two weeks off from running, you can slowly ease back into running with short, easy runs of 3-8 miles. No speedwork just yet, though! You trained your body and your mind hard for several weeks; give yourself a break and just run for the sake of running. I usually like to run for time and keep my Garmin on the watch screen. These weeks would also be the ideal time to leave your GPS watch at home and just run by feel.

Finally, don’t worry about any weight gain during these weeks. Racing weight is not a natural weight for our bodies to sustain, and your body may actually need to gain a small amount of weight in order to recover. I love this post from elite runner Tina Muir on why you should indulge after a marathon. You don’t want to gorge yourself, but now is the time to relax a bit and treat yourself—you worked hard!

Post Marathon Food

[Tweet “How to Recover after a Marathon via @thisrunrecipes #marathon #fitfluential #sweatpink”]

Recovery Week 1

I barely worked out this week, in part because my body needed to recover from the Portland Marathon, in part because I was a bit under the weather during the week. Thankfully, I’m feeling better now, but I’m still going to take a couple more days off! My goal is to take 10-14 days off from running and then keep all my runs easy throughout the month of October. I usually take 5 days off after a half marathon and that has kept me injury-free so far, so I know it’ll be worth two weeks off in the long run.

Monday: Short 20 minutes walk with Charlie.

Tuesday: 30 minutes of yoga in the evening.

Wednesday: Sick – complete rest.

Thursday: Sick – complete rest.

Friday: I wanted to move but I also wanted to follow my recovery plain, so I did an easy and covered 3 miles and 1050 vertical feet in 50 minutes, followed by an easy 15 minutes of bodyweight strength training and the MYRTL mobility routine. I definitely felt a bit of lingering marathon soreness after this!

Saturday: Off – RRCA Seminar in Portland. This was a long day! 

Sunday: Off – RRCA Seminar. 

I am quite ready to return to running this week! My focus for the next several weeks will be building a healthy mileage base before cranking up training for a spring half.

Questions of the Day
How long do you take off after a marathon or half marathon?
What’s your favorite cross-training activity? —>Hiking, yoga, and Pilates.
Did you race this weekend? How did it go? (Congrats to all the Chicago, Hartford, and other runners this weekend!)

Share this post

22 Responses

  1. I usually take 1-2 weeks off of running, although I did not know how important this was after my first marathon! I think I only took like 3 days off and then ran a 10k the same week (it was Thanksgiving week so I ran a marathon Sunday and a 10k on Tuesday). No idea what I was thinking with that! I was enjoying the post-first-marathon-high I guess and luckily I didn’t get injured or sick but it definitely wasn’t a smart move.

    1. I couldn’t imagine moving my legs fast enough for a 10K after a marathon – that’s impressive! That’s good that you didn’t get injured or sick. 🙂 That post-first-marathon high definitely makes it tempting to keep going!

  2. I’ve written a few posts on marathon recovery–I have another coming up on Wednesday as a guest post for Nicole!–And it always amazes me how many different ways there are to recover (as there are to train) and how individual each person’s body is, while still accomplishing the same thing. This is the first time I”m not sore after a marathon, and that is thanks to an amazing massage that unlocked my overtired glutes right after the race. So things are a bit tired, but that is it!

  3. I don’t do marathons and only ran one… I think I took 3 days total off and ran easy for awhile. My lone marathon did not go well and taxed my body (I finished anemic). Recovery is definitely important though- I know many people who ran immediately after, even racing a week later. It’s better to take longer off to be careful than pushing it- just like coming back from injury. I also think recovering from a “bad” race may be even more important and people tend to skip this if they didn’t meet their goals.

    Favorite cross training… BodyPump, yoga, Arc Trainer, and walking. It irks me when people don’t think of walking as cross training because it can be a healthy, relaxing activity and most of us need more movement in our day.

    1. Anemia is not fun – I’m sorry to hear that happened to you! I can’t even imagine racing the week after any distance race, especially a marathon. I agree with you so much – caution is good, even if goals were missed, because running should be about sustainability.
      Walking is definitely cross-training! In that Matt Fitzgerald 80/20 book I read, he talks a lot about uphill treadmill walking as great cross-training and I love to walk to get in extra movement.

  4. Do you follow a similar type of recovery plan after running a half-marathon? Typically, I try and take at least a few days off after a half. This year has been tough because I taxed myself and scheduled them so close together (twice this year I have run 3 half’s within 6-7 weeks of each other…does not bode well to take much time off). My last half of the “season” is coming up 10/25…and I plan (read: TRY) on taking 2 full weeks off from running. This is longer than I would typically take off, but after what I have put my body through this year, I think the body will greatly appreciate this time. : ) Yoga…lots and lots of yoga will be my plan.

    1. I usually do half of that recovery for a half – 4 to 5 days off of running (and lots of yoga if I can), and then I ease back with at least one week of just easy running and then add in strength and more yoga (usually more like two or three weeks of only easy runs under 90 minutes). I think after doing a bunch of halves so close to each other that a longer break would be good – that’s a lot of racing and your body needs a bit of extra recovery, plus it’s so good mentally. I’m always ready to go again after a break!
      I also have this older post from last year on half marathon recovery if it helps you: https://lauranorrisrunning.com/how-to-recover-after-a-half-marathon/
      I hope you do well at your upcoming half! Which one are you running?

      1. Hi Laura – I am running the Vancouver, BC RnR Remix Challenge…10k Saturday, half-marathon Sunday. I seriously went a little overboard with races this year. 🙂

  5. Well, I don’t take any days off running after racing a marathon because I find that keeping my body moving helps with recovery! I take it reallllllllly slow and easy though with lots of stretching, ice, foam rolling, baths, etc. And it’s been about three weeks since the marathon and I only started a bit of tempo work this past week, otherwise it’s been just basic slower running for me.

    1. You have such a high base (80 miles a week is amazing!) that your body can tolerate easy miles so much better than someone like me who’s a total newbie at the marathon and has lower mileage. It definitely is relative to the experience and abilities of the runner, and 1-2 weeks is for most runners who are doing 30-50 miles a week and not as experienced. The slow running is definitely a the key – as is ice and foam rolling, which I should have mentioned! 🙂

    1. That’s so smart of you to take that time off! I take 5-7 days off after half marathons as well. No matter the age, not recovering with time off, cross-training, or easy running is a path to injury!

  6. Last year after Chicago, I didn’t take any time off. I didn’t go crazy but I did some easy runs the week after. I kind of regretted that. This year, I feel pretty wrecked, so taking time off is a much easier sell! I spent most of the day on the couch feeling almost hung over! And eating all the food. This is a great post, one I’ll return to over the next couple of weeks!

  7. After my first marathon, my first run back – I waited 4 days – was a short tempo run at under 10K pace! Acutally, my first few runs were like that! Then I got crazy bad calf tightness and had to take a week off running. I’m really lucky that’s all it was and I stopped before I seriously injured myself. Seriously, who does that?!

    I still only wait about 4 days before I run again, but I keep all of my running for two weeks post marathon short and very easy. I did a handful of 3-5 milers in the two weeks following Grandma’s and then, two weeks later, I finally did a long run of 10 miles (at the time, I was planning to jump back into another marathon training cycle, otherwise I would have taken about a month off running anything above 10K). My favorite XT is swimming, but I rarely swim because the gym with a pool is on the other side of town and has weird hours. But, when I can get up for it, I do like to take spin classes at my regular gym.

  8. I so needed this post! I just ran my first ever marathon two days ago and have wondering what I can do to aid in recovery and when it would be safe to get moving again!

    😀

  9. I love hearing about everyone’s different stories of post marathon recovery. I’ve found doing the reverse taper plan has worked best for me. So basically doing the same the day after the marathon that I did the day before and 2 days after the same as 2 days before and so on. I’ve been able to use a marathon as a training run and recover the same as doing a 20 miler. The area I struggle with the most after a marathon is getting sick. Whether it’s because of travel or that my stomach just cant handle foods after a long run. Thanks for the info:)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *