What's Next?

It's been over 24 hours- my self imposed minimum time before thinking about what's next.

I have to be honest. I wrote this yesterday evening around 8 or so but would not publish it until after the 24 hours to make sure I still felt the same. So with a few edits here are my thoughts.

Next on the schedule is Ocean City Half on September 30th. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I believe there is room to improve yesterday's performance - at Ocean City in two weeks. My legs are not crazy sore - even 24 hours later. I feel the effort but I'm not hobbling by any means. My legs were not the limiting factor. My inefficient fueling, electrolyte balance and the mental issues with the clock were much more of an issue.

Over the last month or so leading up to the RNR, I spent a lot of thought and companion Internet searches on how to manage the two races (RNR and OC) effectively. I wanted to do more than just finish them. The source that made the most sense to me was this one by Jenny Hadfield.  To summarize:

Week #1 - she recommends should be rest, massage/foam roller and 20-40 minutes easy cross training (in my case biking)

Week #2 - she recommends alternating cross training (30-40 min) and easy runs (25-30) with continued stretching and massage/rolling.

It will be challenging since the instinct is to keep 'training'. The way she explains it makes sense to me. In the article JH says

 if you are racing a half- or full marathon two weeks apart, the first week is all about recovery, with time off, a massage, and flexibility work. The following week is all about short, easy-effort runs. This is different than the traditional model of rest and easy runs or cross-training the first week, because in that paradigm you won't be racing in two weeks, you'll still be recovering! The goal after your first race is to recover enough to race again, so you have to speed the rate of recovery rather than train. See the difference? Good. 

She also touts cross training heavily for active recovery. So I'm going to go on my gut that says JH makes sense and have a little faith (ok a lot of faith).

What's next longer term?

After OC there will be 6 weeks to the Philly Half. A little more time to build in some harder training for improvement. More research required probably. :)

I'm still waiting until at least after Ocean City to register for Bob Potts and may wait as long as after Philly half. I have made a decision on the Century Ride though.

When I think about Bob Potts - despite my hesitation to register - I think I can do it. When I think about the Century Ride I think I can do that too. But trying to do them together isn't easy to wrap my head around. A friend made some really good observations a few posts back and I see now that it is probably best to put of the Century to after the marathon. So I'm still going to do a century ride but I'm going to postpone it.