Recovery plans

Following Sunday's race, I've been really tired: not fatigued, just tired. I want to sleep! I've slept in every morning, in fact. Of course, I did run the race completely sleep deprived. One of the drawbacks to living in a college neighborhood is that the kids sometimes stay up all night in the house right behind you, huge bonfire blazing and music pumping into your house...Somehow I managed to get to sleep at midnight, but they woke me up again at 3:00 am and the noise and smoke prevented me from falling back asleep. Then by 5:00 I was getting up for the race anyway! (True story: there was so much smoke in my house that I could smell smoke in my hair all the way through the race, and someone near me at the start said they smelled fire!)

By the time I finished racing and Super Bowling, I was exhausted, and I've slept in every morning since then.

I'm taking time off running for a few weeks to recover. I did nothing on Monday, some stretching on Tuesday, and maybe today I'll do some body-weight strength stuff. I am really not sore at all, surprisingly. I was so beat up the week after Louisiana, which really goes to show how much eating after a race matters. I think my excruciating quad pain was thanks to eating nothing for a whole day while my stomach was upset! I didn't have any major stomach problems this race, and while I didn't have an appetite at first, I ate about a football field of chips and chicken wings that evening.

My recovery concern right now is my right knee. I overworked the pes anserine tendon, and while obviously I can run on it, I'm sure I should let it heal. The condition seems to be linked to tight hamstrings, which you know plague me. I mean, look at those things. I look like I have Mr. Universe hamstrings. I guess I don't really understand how to develop long, lean, strong runner muscles instead of bunchy chunky weight lifter muscles!

So, a week or three off, maybe a PT visit if my knee still hurts, and then a slow return to running, followed by training for the Crescent City Classic 10k in April. I definitely want to be back running, even a little or sporadically, by the 21st: I have exciting plans with a group that night, more about that later...but for now, the plan is keep resting, and ignore the beautiful spring weather I could be enjoying!