Recovering from the Houston Marathon

For the record, I didn’t mean to run two marathons in two months. I’d been telling myself for years that I didn’t want to run the Houston Marathon until I time qualified for it and in December of 2014 I finally did. Then in January 2015 I was forced to defer my The Woodlands Marathon entry due to my IT band injury. The Houston Marathon is at the end of January and the Woodlands Marathon is at the beginning of March – seven weeks apart.

Coming into this spring I knew running two marathons in two months was going to be hard. I spent most of the summer doing strength training and plyometrics to get my body into peak shape. I knew I’d need that strength in the seven weeks between races to accomplish this crazy goal.

Five weeks post marathon and I feel like things are going pretty well. I have two weeks until The Woodlands marathon and though I feel like my body is back to normal my running isn’t.

My knee healed up almost immediately. I spent the entire week after the race stretching every day and the tightness that developed during the race was gone after three days.

Here’s where it gets tough. In the second week of taper prior to Houston I noticed some tightness in my right shin. Like a lot of people I battled shin splints when I first started running but over time they went away as my legs grew stronger. The 70, 80 and 70 mile weeks that made up the last three weeks of training took their toll on my body and shin splints made a return.

The week leading up to the race I wrapped my lower leg up in an ace bandage to provide some compression and wore my compression sleeves during the marathon and didn’t have a problem with the splints.

During recovery it’s been a different story. Since I’m trying to maintain my fitness for The Woodlands Marathon I’ve spent the last five weeks cross training. I’ve only run seven times since the Houston Marathon and each time it’s been painful.

The first couple of weeks after the race the pain was so bad that my shin ached sitting still. Not cool.

My original plan for the seven weeks between the Chevron Houston Marathon and The Woodlands Marathon called for three weeks of recovery, two weeks of training at 80% my peak mileage and two weeks of taper. That’s all been thrown out the window.

That phrase “listen to your body” comes to mind. It was time to do the smart thing and recognize that something isn’t quite right with my body and cross train until things heal up.

Since I already qualified for Boston by a hefty margin, I have no need to race the upcoming marathon. I am in good enough shape that I can cross train leading up to The Woodlands and take the race easy so I can leave with my medal and t-shirt. I won’t be breaking any land speed records but the last thing I want is to finish The Woodlands Marathon with an injury that leaves me unable to run for several months. That would suck.

Instead of following my original plan I have been cross training for the equivalent time duration. The past couple of weeks I’ve been alternating spinning, rowing, swimming and using the arc trainer so I will continue to do these activities in rotation until the race.

I had been doing a short run once a week (because not running is making me crazy) but I feel like that’s slowing the healing process so no running up to The Woodlands is the way to go.

With two weeks to go until race day my shin no longer hurts while doing daily activities. I don’t feel it much unless I am running (and the day after a run) so healing is happening. It’s just a slow process that requires patience – unfortunately, patience isn’t one of my best virtues.

Hopefully two weeks of solid healing will be enough to get me through my second marathon in two months. Because, yes, I’m crazy and maybe a bit stupid but I knew that already.