Last year, I won the Kauai Marathon and came back 14 days later to run a personal best in Philadelphia at the Rock N Roll Half-Marathon with a time of 1:04:59. I seemingly recovered in a couple days and was back hitting good workouts soon after. The Philly RNR was one of my best executed races of my life. Negative splitting and running 4:54s each of the last four miles.
This year was a different story. A couple months ago I decided to do the same two races – Kauai and Philly. Unfortunately this year my recovery was different. I had to take more days off because I was still sore, and my legs haven’t felt great since.
This year my training looked like this…
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Run: 71.9 mi Alt: 35:00 Hours: 8.03 |
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Run: 9.5 mi Bike: 15.0 mi Alt: 15:00 Hours: 2.55 |
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Run: 82.4 mi Alt: 02:05:00 Hours: 10.41 |
Last year my training looked like this…
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Run: 77.9 mi Alt: 02:00:00 Hours: 8.44 |
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Run: 88.8 mi Alt: 06:30:00 Hours: 10.38 |
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Run: 96.5 mi Bike: 13.3 mi Alt: 03:50:00 Hours: 12.12 |
As an athlete I gave it an honest effort today. Unfortunately that honest effort wasn’t a great showing and didn’t meet last year’s results. This is a simple lesson: your recovery changes from day-to-day and year-to-year. What worked one year might not be appropriate the following year. Regardless, second important lesson: A bad race is still a good workout.
Moving on with positive enthusiasm. Thank you RNR Philly for putting on a great event! Congrats to friends Seth (1:17) and Andrew (1:26) on big PRs. They both have positive mojo leading into Marine Core Marathon and I wish them the best of luck!
Never settle,
Tyler