I suck at recovering

I seriously want nothing more right now than to run out the door and pound out a few miles, that is the kind of high I'm still on from Sunday. I have taken THREE WHOLE DAYS off! And it has basically felt like forever. I will say I had absolutely no desire to run the day after the race. My knees were absolutely killing my, my left Achilles was so sore that I had to stretch it before I could even walk normally, and my legs just generally ached. Of course, I had to take the T to a job interview and that meant walking up and down massive flights of stairs...I was almost late to the damn interview because I was having so much trouble, and I'm sure the people around me were...well...intrigued as to why I was moving like a slug haha. Yesterday things were quite a bit better, although it seems as the pain in my knees and feet has started to fade, I've actually noticed the fact that my quads and hamstrings feel kind of torn up. So yesterday was much more of an "ouch my muscles are sore" kind of pain than a "I feel like someone has been banging on my knees with a metal rod" sort of pain. Today I am feeling almost 100%, a little lingering soreness but I was still able to run, with 3 bags of groceries, to catch the train, so I must be recovering well. If I'm feeling good tomorrow I'll probably go for an easy half hour run or something just because I'm starting to go a little crazy with this recovery business. It's harder than the training, I tell you!

Today I put my antsiness towards something productive and cleaned my closet. And did dishes. And laundry. Wow, recovery posts aren't nearly as interesting as training posts are they? I'm still looking for a place to put my mylar blanket. As gloriously as it blends in with the decor of our living room...hehe. I know I need to let my body recover from what was obviously one of the hardest races of my life, but there's a little voice inside me that's like...hey, so when do we get to do another one of those long runs? Like a good 20 miler maybe? WHO AM I??!! Hahaha.

And of course I keep thinking back to the race, which almost seems like some sort of wonderful dream that I can't even believe actually happened. I realized last night as I was falling asleep that my math had been flawed and I actually didn't run the second half of the marathon 25 seconds slower, but 25 seconds FASTER! A real live negative split? That's not something I've ever seen before. I'm already starting to think about my next training cycle and what I'm going to try to change or improve on. Since I didn't really have a plan of any sort going into this race, but whatever I was doing obviously worked for me, I'm hoping to kind of analyze what I DID do a little bit and maybe make an effort to create something that resembles a plan as I train for Boston. Granted, it will be the Run Like A Llama plan, not the Higdon/Pfitz/Hudson/whoever plan, though I will probably be trying to take some hints from all 3 of those peeps, who are obviously smarter training planners than me. But I'm already thinking in the back of my mind, hmm, if you could run this time and feel great the whole time and negative split even though you went out faster than planned and do it all in the shittiest weather imaginable, you could probably run even faster. So don't worry, the details of this plan will probably be hashed out over the next couple of months on this blog, because I'm sure the BF doesn't want to hear about how many tempo runs I'm planning on doing or what my new goal MP is. :)

The fact that I'm already getting excited about running another marathon is really cool to me. When I finished each of the 3 half marathons that I've done, my overwhelming feeling was of never wanting to put myself through that ever again. Obviously I did, and I will continue to do so [because damnit 1:40, I'm coming for you!], but at the time of the finish of the race it was just like...omg that was awful. Compare that to the marathon where even at the worst of times I was still enjoying myself and pushing myself and all I could think as I crossed the finish line was that was AWESOME! When can I do it again? So does this mean I should be running the marathon faster, so I DO feel that way? Who knows. Guess we'll see next time around. ;)

I'm also working on my "race calender" for the next 6 months because right now, for the first time ever? possibly? I have nothing planned or scheduled. I am definitely going to take it relatively easy for the next couple of months, maybe jump in a turkey trot, a 10K would actually be awesome since I haven't really gone for a good PR in that distance in awhile...and then it will be back on the marathon bus in January...

See, you would think that having to take a few days off of running would maybe mean I would stop THINKING about running for maybe 5 seconds...but then again I guess if you know me at all, you know that's really not possible. :)