Ok, so I could answer this as a coach…..or I could answer this as the sarcastic person that I am…so I think I’ll do both!
Here are my 5 Ways to Speed up post marathon recovery!
- Walk. You need time to transition out of marathon mode. Walk into the finishers festival, walk to your car, walk to the metro, walk to get your well earned beer and let your heart rate come down. It also helps to start the tissue repair process. The minute you sit down, your muscles will stiffen up and then good luck getting up. This can lengthen your recovery time tremendously. I’m convinced that this is what helped me after the Paris Marathon.
- Eat You need to replenish those glycogen stores within 30-60 minutes of finishing. While most don’t want to eat too much immediately after following the finish line, at least get a small snack with a good balance of protein and carbs to help maintain blood sugar and help repair muscle tissue.
- Put on some compression! Compression socks can help with recovery by refreshing the circulation to the legs.
- Light stretching: Legs up the wall is a great post race stretch, but you should refrain from heavy rolling and stretching for at least a few hours. Your muscles are already tired and inflamed, let them rest, you just ran 26.2 miles!
- Consider an ice bath or a hot epsom salt bath: both can help with increasing blood flow and helping to reduce inflammation and tissue damage to the muscles.
Now, with that being said, let’s look at the other side of this….
- I definitely agree with walking, very important. Walk right over to the beer tent, immediately.
- EAT ALL THE FOOD. Small snack, no freaking way. Burger and fries all the way, and a huge ice cream sundae after. And another beer. And maybe a cupcake.
- Cork a bottle of champagne. Very important to hydrate some more after one of your biggest workouts EVER.
StretchSit on the couch and have your family wait on you.- Eat cupcakes.
Reposted with Permission from This Mama Runs for Cupcakes