Recovery after Half Marathon

PDCAT

Hi Guys

I'm doing Conn Half Marathon on April 1st. Going down to Kerry the following weekend to climb carrautwohill.
There is a 5 mile race on good Friday April 6th in Killarney and i will be down for this.
Are these two runs too close together to run both flat out. The half is the real goal race. Should i just jog the 5 miler handy. Or would it be ok for me to run this flat out aswell. I understand your supposed to give some time to recover after a half/full marathon, just wondering how long.

Thanks.

ger664

They say that a day's recovery for every mile raced. So by that rule no hard running for 14 days after Conn.

TFBubendorfer

^^^^ What he said.

Running the Good Friday race won't kill you but you're unlikely to be at your very best. Take it easy after Connemara; don't run at all if your legs are sore and or only run slow, short runs otherwise (5 mile recovery runs usually do the trick for me).

Don't try and do a quality workout, that would be just counter-productive.

ThisRegard

ger664 wrote: »

They say that a day's recovery for every mile raced. So by that rule no hard running for 14 days after Conn.

So what exactly is meant by this, a days recovery as in cabbaging or just short slow runs every other day or so ?

RayCun

No hard efforts - races or tough sessions. Easy runs are fine.

sideswipe

RayCun wrote: »

No hard efforts - races or tough sessions. Easy runs are fine.

What if your half is part of a marathon training plan?
What's generally considered more beneficial- run the half easier or race it and cut back on the harder runs after?

RayCun

You'd hope the person designing the training plan took it into account
In the last couple of years I've done the Dublin half in the run-up to DCM. Both times I raced it, but took the following week easy.

Brianderunner

If your well trained you should be ok to resume normal sessions 7-8 days later. A race is a different matter and 5 days is a far too tight.

Put the 5 mile race out of your head totally, because when the going gets tough in the half, you could decide to "save yourself for it" and ease off.

TFBubendorfer

sideswipe wrote: »

What if your half is part of a marathon training plan?
What's generally considered more beneficial- run the half easier or race it and cut back on the harder runs after?

Whenever I race as part of my training plan, I race all out but take it very easy for about 5 days afterwards (well, depending on the length of that race).

There's no point signing up for a race if you then run it at training pace; you can do half-marathon length training runs any time (ok, some people find it handy to run a half-marathon race at marathon pace).

In short, I'd definitely race it and then cut back for a little while.

PDCAT

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

^^^^ What he said.

Running the Good Friday race won't kill you but you're unlikely to be at your very best. Take it easy after Connemara; don't run at all if your legs are sore and or only run slow, short runs otherwise (5 mile recovery runs usually do the trick for me).

Don't try and do a quality workout, that would be just counter-productive.

Thanks. Think i'll race the conn half and run the 5mile very handy.
Plan was to run two/three 5 mile recoverys week after the half marathon anyway. Will just include the 5 mile race as a recovery run.

PDCAT

Brianderunner wrote: »

If your well trained you should be ok to resume normal sessions 7-8 days later. A race is a different matter and 5 days is a far too tight.

Put the 5 mile race out of your head totally, because when the going gets tough in the half, you could decide to "save yourself for it" and ease off.

Thanks Brian. That's what i thought. Will race the half and run the 5 miler as a recovery run. Initially thought the 5 mile race would be a handy PB for me. Will wait for Enniscorthy 5mile in June instead.