How to recover between runs on a multi-day stage race or long training sessions
- Recovery is important so you are able to push yourself day after day and achieve your goal, whether it’s a 250km stage race or back-to-back training sessions
Waking up the day after a long run can be a painful experience. Your legs are like boards of wood and even the act of sitting down is more like a flop. This feeling can be doubled if you have to get up and run again.
Yet, this is what so many runners do when they enter a multi-day stage race, like the 250km Marathon des Sables, or if they embark on back-to-back training sessions to replicate the feeling of having tired legs during the latter stages of a long race.
Here are a few things you can do to ensure the best recovery:
Pace yourself
Before you even finish the run, bear in mind there’s more to come. Adjust your expectations and your speed accordingly so you are going slower than you normally would over that distance. Sure, you can probably fly through a 40km race, but you will only end up slower overall if it means you are crawling the next day.
Learning to pace yourself comes from experience. Make sure you incorporate back-to-back sessions into your training so you know the balance between pushing yourself and saving yourself.