Back to Back (Part 2): Bridging the Gap Between Marathons

One of the things that I wanted to concentrate on the most while doing these back to back marathons was just making sure I was able to recover from the first marathon, so that when I got to the second marathon I’d still be able to run at a pretty high level.

To that effect, I had a few different things that I did.

First I prepared for the race the same way as I normally would in terms of what I ate in the morning of the race, and fueling, just all the nutrition type general concerns.

Another thing that I made sure that I did was I wanted to make sure that my muscles wouldn’t get too cramped, so I wore my Zensah Leg Sleeves, which have worked out pretty well for me over the last couple of years since I started wearing them. And that was just to make sure that my calves wouldn’t get tight, and to keep the blood flow going as I went through the race.

After the race, I made a big point about getting a quick shower. Thankfully they were available. They are right there at the race.

If a shower wasn’t available, I would have made sure that I at least changed into some clean clothes and got out of my running shorts. And a lot of that is because I don’t tend to get a lot of chafing while I’m running. But if I stand around or walk around in my running shorts after a run, then I’ll almost always get some pretty bad chafing, and I didn’t want to have to start my second marathon with some sore legs just from that.

If you do ever run the New Hampshire Marathon, I highly recommend the Bristol House of Pizza. It’s literally right next to the starting line, right across the street from the school where the race starts and finishes.

They have really good food, and it’s very reasonably priced. The staff there was really nice. We just had great time there. Erin and I got there a little bit before our friends that we were meeting, so we had some soup and some garlic bread to hold us over which came after the rest of our party arrived. And we ordered the food, it came pretty quickly. It just definitely filled us up, and gave us the energy we needed to drive the 2 hours back to Maine.

And then once I got home to Maine, I put on my Recovery Socks which are very similar to the Zensah Leg Sleeves, which are graduated compression. I just wore these around the rest of the night until I went to bed. And again that was just preventative.

My calves actually felt fine. All in all most of my muscled felt fine, other than a slight pull that I got midway through the race which derailed me a little bit. I was feeling alright on Saturday night.

For dinner we had a pretty good spread. Chuck Engle was celebrating his 200th sub 3-hour marathon and his 99th win, so we had a bottle of champagne and then sat down to dinner. We had some roasted chicken, acorn squash, quinoa taboule salad, and washed it all down with a bottle of the Blacksmith Winery Blueberry Wine, which goes really well with the roasted chicken.

If you’re ever in Maine, I highly recommend picking up a bottle. They’re just up the road from Portland. They do some pretty good tours of their facility there. So if you happen to find your way up by the Lakes Region then you should stop in.

Coming up to the Maine Marathon, I got up about the same time in the morning as I’d gotten up for New Hampshire. A quarter after 5 or so. We had some breakfast and basically just got dressed and drove down to the race, and we got there with enough time to say hi to a few folks and get ready to run.