The Day After

The day after the Akron marathon brought a nice surprise: MY LEGS ARE *** NOT *** HURTING!!!

So, now I get it: If you want your legs not to hurt, don’t run fast… That’s what my wife is doing :) Seriously, the person who said “It’s not the distance, it's the speed that kills” is absolutely right! After the Perfect 10 Miler 3 years ago when I set my present PR (6:51 pace), my legs were hurting for a couple of days. And it was only 10 miles. After my half marathon at 6:58 pace 3 weeks ago, my legs were hurting. But, running Akron at 8:20 pace does not produce pain (even though it felt hard).

I am happy for that. For a while I was worried that I pushed too hard in this marathon. The reason you should not run a marathon too close to an important race is that the recovery from the marathon can mess up your preparation for the race. This does not appear to be no problem for me now. I still have 5 weeks for Athens. My goal is 3:30, which is rather conservative but very reasonable considering the difficulty of the course.