Coming down from race day
The big race is over. You gave it everything, and now you have a time on the board. Whatever it says, you've earned a celebration.
In the final kilometers, a dangerous thought often sneaks in: why am I doing any of this? I want nothing except for it to end. Yet a few minutes after finishing, I begin thinking about next time. Better next time. Plans form, and gradually I believe it again: the show must go on.
After the race, you're soaked and exhausted, and your feet are swelling. Time for cooling gel on your legs and a change into dry clothes. Some marathons offer a post-finish massage. The people who give those massages are saints. Nothing else feels quite that heavenly.
If there's food, eat. Your body has burned a lot of calories and needs to start recovering. Now. I burn more than 3,500 calories in a marathon, more than an average person uses in a day: a day to a day and a half's worth of energy. It's as if you've lived an extra day, compressed into a few hours. Of course your body needs rest. If you can, go and sleep for an hour or an hour and a half. Take care of your feet, shower, and sleep.
The next few days won't be easy. However experienced you are, you've put your body through enormous stress. It needs its resources for recovery, so let it rest. But that doesn't mean doing nothing.
If you aren't injured, stretch regularly, a little more than usual, and do some light recovery exercise. I tried stopping altogether and waiting for my fitness to return. Hopeless. Passive rest alone wasn't bringing it back.
So running in the days after a marathon makes sense to me. The muscles will hurt, but they'll be working their way back into action. The sooner I can return to my usual routine, the better. I normally use a reverse staircase: 1 to 3 km the day after the race, then gradually add 2 or 3 km at a time until I'm back to my usual distances.
Experts generally advise against racing more than one marathon a season. I'd get bored. I want to test myself more often.
Exercise testing
A runner's relationship with their heart tends to follow a familiar path.
As a child, you discover your pulse. For years, checking it means two fingers on your wrist, the way your grandmother showed you. Mostly you forget about it, except when your heart starts racing.
You take up a sport without initially caring much about the number. Then you read something, become curious, and buy a fitness tracker or watch. Its readings aren't always consistent, and occasionally it frightens you.
The inconsistency becomes irritating, so you buy a dedicated heart-rate monitor. Better data makes you want still more data. You start examining resting pulse, sleep records, and every rise and fall during a run. What happened there? What did that spike mean?
Next come zone tables, gadget defaults, perhaps a more expensive watch. You begin organizing workouts around heart-rate zones.
Eventually, after a few marathons, you find yourself running uphill on a treadmill in a mask that looks suspiciously like bondage gear. You're wired up like an astronaut or a test pilot, and someone's taking blood from your finger. Disappointment, skepticism, protest, acceptance: you cycle through them pretty quickly.
My turn came too. After asking around among my running friends, I decided I needed a professional assessment. I had no coach; all the opinions on my running had come from fellow amateurs. I visited a sports-medicine center after a marathon in which I'd run much faster than before. I wanted to find out what kind of shape this magnificent body was really in.
Somewhere deep down, I hoped the test would reveal that I was exceptionally gifted. Or at least a little better than most.
No such luck. The center saw plenty of athletes, and I wasn't about to amaze anyone. What I could get was useful information and heart-rate zones that actually fit me.
The test worked like this. I ran on a treadmill that gradually got faster and steeper. Sensors recorded my heart's activity. A breathing mask measured the gases going in and out, giving information about oxygen use and carbon dioxide production. Finger-prick samples taken while I was moving showed how blood lactate changed as the work increased.
The treadmill kept getting faster and steeper, entirely unimpressed by my suffering. It kept tormenting me until I reached the limit of what I could sustain and asked to stop. "Everybody asks eventually," said the young doctor, an accomplished runner herself. Nobody defeats the treadmill.
The results showed how my lactate levels rose as the effort increased, along with how hard I could push in that test. For someone curious about running, seeing actual measurements of what was happening inside me was fascinating.
I left the torture chamber with the graph, individually assessed heart-rate zones, and recommendations for a few additional checks.
I wasn't some freak of nature. I was a pretty ordinary guy. After thinking it over, I decided I could live with that. At least the photos looked dramatic.
I immediately changed the watch settings to use my own measured zones. The test didn't otherwise transform my training. I carried on much as before, only now I understood more and worried less.
Fall running
Fall may be the most productive running season. Many famous marathons take place then. Perhaps a northern-hemisphere summer gives runners time to prepare and arrive ready for their best performance.
The fall race calendar gives runners plenty to look forward to.
Amateurs get their chance too. I've put in the work through spring and summer. Now I get to see whether it paid off.
The cooler weather feels made for running. Around 10°C is often mentioned as a favorable temperature. I remember reading about the carefully chosen conditions in Vienna for Eliud Kipchoge's INEOS 1:59 Challenge, when he covered the marathon distance in under two hours.
After summer heat, a cool run feels like stepping from a scorching beach into an air-conditioned hotel. I liked fall before I ran. Running made me love it.
Even without a time target, what could beat a golden woodland with leaves falling around me? Morning, leaves rustling underfoot, all that beauty. I feel less thirsty, the pace often comes more easily than in summer, and my mood rises with it.
Fall is the perfect season for running. Officially.
Going for a hundred
In June, six months into the year, I had aimed for roughly 80 km a week. Tapering for the marathon and recovering afterward interrupted that rhythm. Once I was back, I began wondering whether I could manage 100 km in a week.
It wasn't easy. The main obstacle was time rather than how my legs felt. At around five minutes per kilometer, 11 km fits into about an hour. I can fit an hour a day around work. More than that gets tricky. A hundred kilometers means roughly 15 km a day if I run all seven days, more if I do not. Add changing, showering, and dealing with the laundry, and the whole routine approaches two hours.
Weekends offer some extra space, but it's still a large commitment. For a limited period before a major race, I could imagine clearing some space in my schedule to chase that beautifully round number: one hundred.
I completed my first 100 km week at the end of September, ahead of a half marathon in Kingsford. It felt strange. In February, 100 km had been an entire month's work. Now I had done it in a week. I was thrilled. I felt ready for bigger races.
Twice a day
Occasionally, especially in summer, I felt good, had time, and ran in both the morning and the evening. There was no plan behind it.
Then I read about Eliud Kipchoge's training. The first man to cover a marathon distance in under two hours: a Kenyan runner with a farm, a wife, children, and cows. Also an astonishingly effective running machine. Of course I wanted to know how he trained.
Copying his schedule wouldn't produce his results. His team designed the workload for his exceptional body and experience. He also trained at around 2,000 meters, then raced in the more oxygen-rich conditions near sea level. Still, I was curious. What did the champion's days look like?
In the account I read, there was no mysterious trick. Enormous volume, around 170 to 190 km a week, much of it fast by amateur standards, alongside plenty of genuinely easy recovery running. There wasn't much about the gym in that account. Mostly, he ran. It was strikingly simple.
What especially caught my attention was the frequency of two-a-day sessions. Not every day, but very often. A longer morning run, perhaps 15 to 20 km, and about ten in the evening. That was how the kilometers added up.
The morning might contain tempo work, fartlek, or intervals. The evening was usually gentler. After a particularly long or hard morning, more than 21 km, the evening could be free.
My own difficulty with doubles was finding the hours. Even if I could run 20 km in one outing, two separate tens took longer overall. Twice the changing, leaving the house, warming up, showering, and putting things away. The same distance, more logistics.
Doubles had their appeal. Breaking up the distance changed how it felt. More runs also gave me more chances to experiment.
But professionals can spend several hours a day on sport because it's their job. For an amateur with work, family, ordinary obligations, and other interests, that time is a luxury.
Two sessions can also mean more total load than a person can absorb. Enthusiasm doesn't remove the need for judgment.
Still, I liked the idea of setting aside some time - a week, perhaps a longer block - in which I could experiment and feel a tiny bit like Kipchoge.
When people say, "You should try everything once," they usually seem to mean sex or drugs. Why be so unimaginative? Try running twice a day.
Will running eat my muscles?
Bullshit. Running doesn't shrink your muscles or eat them away.
In one of his books, Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes falling into the trap of confusing cause and effect. He started swimming seriously because he wanted... a swimmer's body. You know the look: tall, handsome champions, broad shoulders, narrow waists, powerful chests. Swimming wouldn't make him taller, obviously. But the rest? After a while, Taleb noticed his shape wasn't changing much. Then he realized it wasn't his fault. Broad-shouldered people with streamlined bodies win swimming races because their bodies suit the sport. The sport didn't give them those bodies.
Running is much the same. Famous distance runners are lean, even skinny, with long limbs and narrow shoulders. If you're built differently, running won't turn you into one of them. Reaching the very top takes certain genetic advantages.
Running doesn't consume your muscles for fuel. It gradually reduces your overall body fat. You lose weight, and the muscles you already have become more defined and visible. Your leg muscles grow and firm up. With less fat covering them, the veins stand out too. It looks good. You'll still look like yourself, just with less body fat.
Our genetic makeup is individual. But taking up running doesn't mean saying goodbye to your muscles.