Tag Archives: half marathon

Thursday is swim day around here, and I went to my gym’s pool at opening time, 5:45 AM, to get a 3 KM / 3280 yard swim.

I do this once a week, and I have trouble beforehand every time. Thinking about such a long swim, and not running on top of that, is hard for me. But after about 5 laps warming up, I start to really enjoy my time in the pool, cutting through water, pushing forward, and feeling like I’m swimming so fast. Which I know I’m not, it takes me about 70 minutes to swim this distance.
I’m beat by the end of the workout, but it’s a good feeling.

It was raining hard this morning, and I got to the office really late. It took me forever to take the kids to daycare and drive to work. We are not used to much rain in Israel, so it seems the world stops when it does rain, traffic gets crazy, the sidewalks are empty of walkers.

My next race is the Jerusalem Half Marathon on Friday the 21^st, so tomorrow I officially start tapering, one week. It should go smooth, I’m getting good at this race preparation stuff. I don’t feel nervous about the race or worried about tapering. I was a mess before my first race, and to think that was only 4 months ago…

I know the courses of the Jerusalem races (all distances) are tough, with lots of hills, so I’ll definitely be slower than my last half.
After looking at the course map a few times I finally figured out to look up the elevation chart.

Approx 230 meters / 755 feet total elevation gain. That seems like a lot to me.

Fitness, Races, Running, Training

Training After a Race

March 5, 2014 2 Cups 'N Run 25 Comments

I think one of the most overlooked aspects of training for a race, is what comes afterwards.
Recovery time should definitely be part of your race plan.

I always feel fine after a race, but then a couple of days later it hits me: I’m tired, my legs are sore, and I’m hungry all the time.

The most common advice I have heard is to rest or do light exercise for the number of days equivalent to the number of miles raced.
I guess that could make sense, even though there’s a lot of grey in that… how many days to completely rest? How many days to do light exercise? How light is light?

Personally, I don’t go by the rule above of taking one rest day for each mile ran, but closer to half of that.. so if I ran a 10K/6.1M I will take it easy for 3-4 days, and if I ran a half marathon (21.1K/13.1M) I will take it easy for a week.

Also, because I taper before a race, making the week before the race much lighter in running distance than my average week, the days after the race that I rest or take easy, I still average a running distance similar to a regular running week.

For example:

However, the days after a race are always light in intensity.

In addition to adjusted training, I try to give extra importance to good nutrition, and eating an extra amount of calories (my body screams for this), getting enough sleep, foam rolling, stretching, and drinking a lot of water.