Rest, Recovery, and Returning to the Trails

Rex and I are both finding ourselves in a period of reduced running activity after the Round the Island Run, which was a 135 mile, 50 hour venture.  Though is was more a sojourn than a run--we were going for time but in kind of a relaxed kind of way that moves the experience from a race mentality into the realm of endurance experience.  At that kind of distance and time the difference is subtle, but really centers around how you react with those around you, as opposed to how 'hard' you hit the pace.

The Invincible Ultra Runner

A month has passed and I am still feeling the underlying effects of the experience.  Now it is more a mental exhaustion than a physical one. My  hormone levels always seem to suffer wide spikes after these long runs and the snap, snap back effects are very dragged out.  Physically I had a week or two of foot swelling, but which disappeared quickly when I began to exercise again.  

My biggest problems, and this has occurred  a few times with these long runs, is that a few weeks after the experience I seem to be prone to injury. This time it has been my back and my right piraformis.  I have had trouble sitting in a chair to work with lower back pain and a hip that just goes into spasm.   This kind of thing takes weeks to work its way out of the system.

I've been getting out on the trails again, and my knees are in pretty good shape at the moment.  My speed seems to be good and I have been clocking some nice times Low and sub-50's from the nature center to the top of Tantalus road on HURT route.  But going out with the younger crowd I realize that my stamina is down.  I can not crank for more than an hour or so when I should be able to put the pedal to the metal for two to three hours.  I'm worn thin, and frustrated with how long it takes to recover.

There can be no denying that some of this is age.  I bump up against the barrier  but it keeps creeping in on me.  I can tell myself I'm not trying hard enough, but the truth is I can not do what I did when I did not know the repercussions as well as I do now.   --That's right---age forcefully bestows wisdom.  The after effects of 'going for it' are often severe no matter what the age.  But having suffered from them time and again one is more likely to try and limit them 'in vivo' so to speak, as the run is going down.  Separating this from the actual decline in ability is, well, not worth the effort....so to speak.

All in all I'm beginning to tire, literally and mentally of the long ultras.  It is not willingly, but one that comes about as a result of declines in other areas of my life.  Difficulties that arise as a result of the effort, and its after effects.   Sitting around staring at the wall for a week is meditative at best, and often just seen as being a 'lazy slob'  by others.  It's not the 50 hours to go around the island, its the two months of fuzzy thinking that follows, that gives me pause.