Half Marathon Recovery Run

I felt fairly good after yesterday's half marathon.  Even sitting in the car for 3 hours, driving home didn't bother me too much.  I did wear compression shorts and socks to aid the recovery.  I'm not sure if they helped, but I was good to go by this afternoon.

Some people like to take off the day after a half.  I like to get the legs moving a little, to try to aid that recovery process.  Today's plan was simply an easy 4 miles.  I would be staying in the neighborhoods, since it was easy and short.

The weather for the race yesterday was great, but the cold was back again today.  It wasn't so much the cold, that was 30 degrees, and I can deal with it.  It was the wind, which is currently in the mid 20 MPH range, I think.  Because of it, I wore a windbreaker jacket, pants and gloves and a headband.  That helped against the wind, but I was kind of hot by the end of the run.

I began with the loop around my neighborhood.  I was surprised with how great I felt.  I thought for sure that some area of soreness that I wasn't feeling would come creeping up out of nowhere.  The right hamstring and left foot had minor soreness, but that was it.  The first mile was a slow 8:51.

I went down to the school.  As I got to the highway to cross it, I saw there was a lot of traffic.  Rather than stop and wait, I looped around the parking lot for an additional 1/3 of a mile.  I then crossed the road with no issues.

The plan was to do the short loop around the other neighborhood.  That's around a mile and a half long.  Then, I would come back and finish up with whatever was left in the parking lot.  It was quite windy as I went out and around the loop.  I felt good though, so I did enjoy myself.

The run seemed to go by fast.  I ran past a pair of walkers.  I then encountered them later when I added a short loop.  That got me close to another half mile.  Miles 2 and 3 were run at 8:25 and 7:58 respectively.  I tried to keep it easy, but I guess with how strong I am, I'm running faster even during easy runs.

I headed back toward the school and had the wind at my back.  I was nearly at 4 miles already when I got back to the school.  I only had to run a short segment of the lot to finish up the run.  I didn't need to do the full loop.  This last mile was an 8:05.  It was a perfect recovery run and I feel great now.

Tomorrow, I was going to take off.  However, I'll probably run with Emily instead.  She wants to do 5 or 6 miles.  I might end up running 10.  The company would be good.  I feel pretty well recovered, so I should be alright.  I wasn't sure how my body would handle it, since I haven't run a half marathon close to that fast before.  So far, so good though.

4 miles - 33:20 (8:20 pace)