My long slow run yesterday was 19 kilometres in 2 hours and 10 minutes. It rained the entire time, by the first five km I was thoroughly soaked. At the 1:40 mark, in the middle of our second 30-minute tempo pick-up, my left hip and calf started to twinge with tightness.
Afterwards I had a bath, ate, went out to get groceries, ate again, and slept for an hour and a half, then cleaned my place and hosted friends for dinner. I finally got the kitchen clean and went to bed at 1 am. In all that time – no hobbling with stiffness. No sore feet. No blisters.
I woke up this morning – a little dehydrated from the wine, but feeling great otherwise. No lactic-acid-drenched legs, feet perfectly fine.
What?? After last week’s run of just over an hour I stiffened up by dinnertime! I must replicate this non-stiffness in the future. What did I do right?
I think I did four things to help my recovery – long hot soak, lots of hot tea, restorative nap and light activity.
When I got home I threw off the soaked clothes and ran a hot bath. My skin was red where my soaked running clothes had touched. The hot water actually felt cold until I started to warm up. My daughter boiled a kettle of water and slowly added it until it was the temperature of a hot tub. Ahhhh. It was hard to get out of there.
Rehydrating is essential – I drank two big mugs of tea.
After I shopped for the evening’s meal, I crawled back into bed and was blissfully napping until it was time to get up, clean up and start prepping for my dinner – halibut fillets in an orange teriyaki sauce, new steamed potatoes, asparagus, salad, olives, whole-grain baguette. My dear friends brought pie – PIE! for dessert. Yum…
I made sure to drink a big glass of water as I was washing up after they left. I think the fact I didn’t just lay on the couch and watch movies and eat cereal had a lot to do with it – I kept moving — cooking and eating well and laughing with my friends.
It was absolutely lovely to wake up feeling great with supple, not wooden, legs. I felt like a kid I was so happy! Get ready for more dinner parties thrown by yours truly.
