For those of you that reguarly read my London Marathon training blog, you’ll know that two week’s ago I ran the Okinawa Marathon as my endurance training. I was surprised not to have suffered from sore legs following the event…until now that is! On Saturday I woke up with sore legs! I must be getting really old, but two weeks for DOM’s to set in is pushing it a bit!
After a good start to this week apart from a few niggles in the left knee I woke up on Saturday morning with my legs locked up, so stiff that I had to hobble down stairs…I then spent 30 minutes stretching and massaging my legs and luckily they responded and loosened up. At 7:30am I left home for my regular 5Km time trial round Bushy Park. I usually run just over 16mins round the Park but today with tighter legs than usual and a marathon still in them I knew it would be slow. In fact I was very content to get round in 16:46.
I had thought about not doing the Bushy Park run today, but marathons slow you down and unless I do some speed work, I will not magically get faster, so I did not want to miss out on an opportunity for some faster than race pace running. Over the next few weeks I shall continue to work away at getting the speed back. I wish to emphasise that my approach to racing a marathon is all about leg speed. If you are very comfortable at the speed of you chosen marathon pace then at least the first half of the run will feel good. If you do not have enough leg speed and have only worked endurance, then your race pace will feel tough from the start, and being naturally lazy I would rather have an easy first 13 miles if possible. I should add that I have already got my endurance training under my belt.
Back to the cause of my may DOM’s, which I suspect is not actually from the marathon but caused by an excellent track session I did at Palmer Park in Reading on Wednesday.
I knocked out 10×1 mile in an average of 5:23 per mile with only 1min 30 rest. They felt very easy, but as I know through experience, running 10 mile on a track is never easy, and will really stress your calf muscles. Today just reinforced this fact and unfortunately due to my age the stiffness did not hit until today 3 days later, proving that DOM’s is very real problem for the older runner!
And how do I cope with it? Well, I am off to have a hot tub jacuzzi and cold bath therapy followed by a massage to loosen things up. I have a long run planned for tomorrow…but nothing is written in stone, if my legs tell me not to run in the morning. I shall substitute it with the X-trainer, and swimming. According to the weather forecast, it will rain tomorrow so I may need a good excuse to train indoors!