The Boston Marathon vs. your first 5k: how long does it take to recover?

Congratulations Boston Marathon finishers! Immediately after crossing the finish line in a race as intense as the Boston Marathon, it may feel like your body will never fully recover. However, it is only a matter of time, combined with the proper amount of rest and moderate workouts, before you are ready to begin training to race again at the same level. The same rules that can help you decide how long to rest between marathons can also help you plan your recovery after your first 5k, and every race in between. Read on to learn more about resting between run training cycles in the article by Matt Fitzgerald.

How Long Should You Rest between Run Training Cycles?

By Matt Fitzgerald

On April 13, 2008, Ryan Hall finished 5^th in the London Marathon with a time of 2:06:17—the fastest marathon time ever recorded by an American-born runner. Just 14 weeks later Hall ran the Beijing Olympic Marathon, finishing a disappointing 10^th. Now, top-10 in the Olympic Marathon is not bad, but Hall knew he could have done better.

After the Games, Hall confessed that his pre-Olympic training had gone poorly. He just couldn’t match the times he was accustomed to posting in key workouts, and the more he fell short the more he tried to force his training, and the more he forced it the worse he felt. In the immediate aftermath of Beijing, Hall wasn’t sure exactly why he had not been his usual self in the summer of 2008, but eventually he figured it out. “Looking back on it,” he said in a recent interview on runnersworld.com, “I think I never let my body totally recover from London so I never made the physical gains that I needed to.”

Many years ago, when asked how long one should wait after running a marathon before running another one, the great Bill Rodgers said, “Until you’ve forgotten it.” Ryan Hall probably defied this wisdom! Seriously, though, it’s not that Hall felt he ran London too close to Beijing. Rather, he determined that he simply did not rest long enough after London. Even though he would have had less time to train specifically for Beijing if he had rested longer after London, his training and the Olympic Marathon itself probably would have gone better, as his body would have been better able to handle the training he planned to do.

I’m not aware of much scientific research on the physiological changes that occur in the body during a rest period that follows a major training ramp-up and peak race. Undoubtedly it involves a deeper level of muscle and joint tissue healing and a more complete resetting of the endocrine and immune systems than occurs during a garden-variety rest week within a training cycle. An Austrian study found that blood levels of antioxidant enzymes remained significantly reduced, while biomarkers of muscle damage and inflammation remained significantly elevated, in triathletes nearly three weeks after they had crossed an Ironman finish line. I would imagine that such abnormalities could be found in runners for at least a couple of weeks after they complete a high-workload training cycle culminating in a peak race.

Whatever happens, it is quite certain that the body requires a prolonged rest between training cycles to perform at least as well in the next peak race as it did in the previous one. It is a phenomenon that every runner experiences. A runner can no more expect to train progressively year-round than a cornfield can expect to produce corn spring, summer, fall and winter.

So, are there any rules concerning how long a runner should rest between training cycles?

Read more in the full article about the rule that Matt Fitzgerald has formulated for runners resting between training cycles.

Comments

[Francis Bauer]

I totally agree, I just ran it again and now 3 days after for the first time I just did 40 minutes of light light non-impact cardio to test my body, I know that 2-4 weeks is where 80-90% of the runners will be for recovery after a marathon, it all depends on,...welll,...the list can go on and on, the main thing is for most all people, when you think that you have rested enough, go a few more days.
Francis Bauer