It’s now a week after my big race and frankly I feel pretty well recovered. The rule of thumb that I keep hearing is that you require one day of rest for every mile you race. That means that after a half marathon you’d probably need two weeks of recovery time. That’s all well and good, but the interesting thing for me is that I really didn’t have much chance to just not run for a few days. Why? Well, I had to take my “learn to run” (LTR) class out.

If you recall, I’m teaching this season’s LTR for the next ten weeks. What a large class! I’ve been understandably nervous, but really they’re all just as nervous as I am, so it all works out in the end. Everyone’s enthusiastic and energetic. It really is a pleasure leading so many people interested in something I’m keen on. I suppose the word I’m looking for is “passionate.” Is that a bit extreme? I don’t know. Whatever the case, if it hasn’t been obvious in this blog, I love this activity!

Anyway, today was my third time taking this group out. We all did the intervals and we were back at the store in half an hour. My watch said that I’d covered about 2.3 kilometres with them. I was about to go home when I realized that, hmm, I really should get some more mileage in. So, on my own I went for a leisurely outing. With it I was able to tack on another 6K+ to today’s distance.

Part of me wanted to go farther, but honestly I wasn’t feeling my greatest. I was a little bit surprised to feel like I was putting in way more effort doing my run than I should have been. Why? What was going on? Some cursory analysis made me realize that my feet were horribly uncomfortable, and the discomfort was travelling up my body. Blaaaaargh! I reasoned that it was due to the socks that I was wearing. Yeah yeah, sounds like a dumb reason, but hear me out. When I was in Arizona I picked up a few pairs of Nike sports socks from Ross. I usually ran in cotton socks which everyone says is a big no-no. Whatever–that’s what I found comfortable. Anyway, when I spotted the socks I thought I’d just get some and that would be my introduction to the world of proper socks. Well, it’s only now that I’ve put it all together and deduced that the socks just plain suck. They feel padded under foot, and that doesn’t agree with my already flexible feet. They’ve got this weird constriction thing going around the arch part of the foot. I suppose they’d be great for people with average feet. For me though, my feet need room to spread out. Any constriction would just be counter productive, know what I mean? All of that discomfort, paired with the fact that I was wearing pants (hey, it was cold this morning) made for a more difficult outing.

When I got home, I ended up making myself breakfast before getting ready to go out. That’s a little bit different from what I’ve been doing over the past few Sundays. Lately I’ve been making sure to follow up my runs with a protein shake to encourage better recovery. I’d like to think they’ve been helping because I’ve been getting less post-run headaches. I also haven’t been ending up in bad Sunday afternoon comas as much. Today though? I was hit hard! Apparently breakfast wasn’t enough. I was nodding off in church. After lunch I fell into a long 5-hour nap. I wasn’t feeling the greatest after that nap either. So anyway, after next Sunday I’m going to be sure to get my recovery drink in and I’ll compare how I feel afterwards.

I guess all of this shows that I still have a lot to learn about how my body reacts to this act of running. It’s attractive in its simplicity, and yet even the slightest thing can make what’s supposed to be an easy run into something several times difficult. Crazy that.