Race recovery

To echo Amanda's latest post, we had a great, if extremely cold, half-marathon on Sunday! I was quite pleased with our 8:10/mile pace, and while I was definitely sore yesterday and this morning, I learned from Amanda that I can be a bit more aggressive with my out-going pace on longer runs that I have been.  I tend to start them out very conservatively and then when I am halfway, start to turn it on, but I can clearly be more aggressive, as I felt like I was really moving for the first 6 miles on Sunday, and was able to still finish strong, as we almost even-split the race.  Truth be told, some of that might have been due to the cold.  I have a feeling our first mile was the slowest, as by the time the gun went off, even though we had only been waiting around from 10-15 minutes, my toes were truly NUMB.

Not us.

But as far as pacing goes, Amanda is the opposite, or at least so she says.  She tends to take it out too aggressively and really die at the end, so us racing together was a good learning experience for us both! I think a lot of my soreness is from the mini fartlek's we were doing in the beginning to zip around people, as well as all the clenching we did in the beginning at at the end of the race as we scooted back to our room at NYC, clutching our space blankets, bagels and frozen apples.  Also, I didn't hydrate very much during the race, since the water was ice water (or frozen) and I didn't want to get my already freezing hands wet! Or my face! I was really jealous of all the people who had those big balaclavas over their faces.  I brought a neck gaiter to wear in the beginning, but ended up taking it off after 4 miles, as then I was just getting sweaty on my neck while still being cold everywhere else!

After the race, I swam a bit with the hubs (like, about 500 yards verrry slowly) and then got in the hot tub and sauna for a bit to stretch and continue warming back up.  I did a real swim with the NYAC tri club on Monday night, which felt great and definitely helped move any last bit of soreness out of my legs.  Today, I was a bit stiff in the morning when I woke up in my calves but did a nice hour-long spin on the trainer.   I did some interval work, and then some serious stretching afterwords.  I think I will be 100% tomorrow and ready to keep back at it! I think Amanda and I will have a great running base built up by the time the weather gets warm and we can kick it in to gear with the biking, which is going to be our biggest hurdle for the Iron Man, as it is definitely our weakest link of the three, and also the longest segment by FAR.   If we can drop in 15-18+ mile runs no problem by early spring time, I feel like we'll be in great shape to start building up our base on the rides, and focus on running off the bike, too.