Massage Therapy

Today, I was finally back at my pre-race weight, so I can go back to normal food and drink consumption. Did another walk today, 30 minutes or so, just to let the legs do their thing. Then, after that, I went to see Ron for my post-marathon massage. The verdict? Calves and hamstrings were absolutely fine. No soreness to speak of. Quads? Amazingly sore. He worked them over with the massage hammer, an evil therapeutic device that blasts the muscles deep down, and there were more than a few times that I was really working hard not to tell him to stop the torture. I must admit they felt a lot better after he was done. The most soreness, however, was in the shin muscles. They were a bundle of tender tissue, for sure. Again, after the massage and hammering, they were much better. After I got done, Ron had to get going to see his nutritionist, and he let me continue to work over my muscles with the hammer, which helped a lot. I did an additional 10 minutes or so working over the tibialis anterior and quads, and they are markedly improved. I think I'll do some very very easy jogging tomorrow...maybe interspersed with walking. The Path To Recovery continues...

Oh, yeah, I also figured out today another Lesson Learned from Freescale 2005. When you have absolute data that says you are not at your best (my elevated HR, for instance), go quickly to your Plan B instead of trying to hang onto your major goal in the face of physical evidence. I think if I had backed way off at mile 4 or 5 instead of soldiering on at 9:00 pace, I may have been able to run 5-10 minutes faster on Sunday. Hard to know for sure, but backing off would have been a really smart thing to do.