Recovery

I didn't feel too bad after the Marathon but that doesn't mean that it is necessarily a good idea to rush back to training as it would be a fairly good recipe for injury. On the other hand I find that doing something helps me recover more quickly than doing nothing, so I just did what I felt very comfortable with every day. This started off with a bit of light pedalling on the static bike, walking on the treadmill with a steep incline and some swimming.

By Wednesday I felt up to cycling in to work and I was itching to use my road bike as it had been months since I had last ridden it. I didn't choose the best of days for it as it actually snowed most of the day but luckily I missed most of the bad weather and the roads were relatively dry by the time I went home. I felt ready to run again by Thursday and on Friday I even did some weights for the first time in months.

I rode for an hour on Saturday morning on my Triathlon bike on the turbo trainer. It is still an effort to maintain the aero position (I suspect it always will be) but I found that I could tolerate it fairly well if I rode 4 minutes of every 5 "aero" with 1 minute "sit up and beg". Over the next weeks building up to the Lisbon International Triathlon, I'll try to extend this to an hour and a half with much fewer breaks from the aero position. As I don't have a power meter (nor do I think I will ever buy one unless they come way down in price and hassle) I'm keeping track of how fast my cycle computer reckons I am going and controlling such things as my heart rate and the pressure of my tyres. Of course, the average speed is much higher than it would be if I was on the road, battling against the air, but the important thing here is not the absolute value but the relative improvement.

We spent the rest of the weekend in Ciudad Real with my in-laws. They told me that there was a 10k race on the Sunday but, after investigating, it turned out that the inscription period had already closed. I also wasn't sure that it was a terribly good idea to race a 10k only a week after the Marathon. So instead I made the race part of my training for the day: I ran 10k at around 4:20 min/km pace before joining the start of the race (right at the back of the pack) and then gradually increased my pace. By the end I was running at Half Marathon pace (3:45 min/km) and, although I stopped short of the stadium finish because I didn't have a race number, I would have finished well under 40 minutes. In the end I couldn't keep my competitive spirit at bay as I had actually planned to run it in 45 minutes. Still, it was a good training session and I feel back to normal now and ready to start my 9 week training programme (which I still have to write!).