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Excellent marathon recovery strategy

April 16, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Bike

Comments:
Wow, I am a lot sorer now than when I woke up this morning.

About 4 weeks ago I emailed my high school teammate/bff Andy Garin asking him to set aside the day after the marathon for a classic Andy-and-Matt bike adventure. We go riding quite often when I'm living in Boston and it's warm, but we haven't had the chance since early September when we did a bizarre suburban orienteering race on bikes right before I left for my year abroad. Some people might think the day after a marathon is not ideal for biking, given that your quads are often what hurt most, but what do they know? Andy is leaving to become a professor at the University of Illinois in August, so this could be our last chance. Clearly, the day before the marathon wasn’t an option. How bad could the day after one be?

Normally our bike rides consist of biking out to the end of a commuter rail line and taking the train back. This requires some rather impeccable timing since if you miss the train you could be stuck in some podunk rural hamlet for hours if not overnight. Since Andy and I are both big procrastinators and have a penchant for stopping to inspect local architecture, waterfalls, historical markers, cows, and ice cream shops, we invariably find ourselves in an all-out sprint for the last 20-80 minutes of our ride, bursting onto the railway platform out of breath moments before the train rolls into the station. Andy’s wife Ally has suggested that we avoid this problem by taking the train first and riding back, but where’s the fun in that? Collapsing exhaustedly into a railway carriage with your quads burning and your forehead still throbbing from the ice cream cone you were rapidly forced to finish at a red light 11 miles back is part of the fun!

Today, however, we succeeded in following Ally’s advice while STILL managing to almost miss our train. The wind has picked up significantly overnight to about 25mph coming from the northwest. The solution, therefore, was to take a northwest-bound train and then ride home with the wind at our backs. Since we’d slept in, however, there was only one outbound train remaining that morning, leaving in 45 minutes. That’s plenty of time, I figured. Enough to slowly roll out of bed, brush my teeth, put on sunblock, make sure my legs still worked, unlock my bike, realize the tires were flat, send Andy back to get the pump, listen to Andy explain to Ally over the phone that he’d locked their keys inside the apartment… boy how time flies! Suddenly 45 minutes had before 5. Our adventure was saved by two things: a) the commuter rail station was only a 3-minute ride away if we peddled really fast and treated one-way street signs as a mere suggestion and b) the line at that really good bagel place we just had to stop at before boarding was less than 2 minutes long. With seconds to spare we boarded the train and were off to outer reaches of suburbia.

As we approached the South Acton stop where Andy had planned for us to get off, I asked him how long he expected the ride to take. "About an hour and a half," he replied. "That’s it?" I thought. We can do better than that. "The next stop is not for 7 more miles," he added. "Well," I thought, "that sounds more like it." And with about as much coaxing as is takes to convince a 5-year-old to eat a candy bar, I persuaded Andy that going one stop farther was, in fact, an excellent idea.

The bike ride itself turned out to be stunningly easy. When you are on a road bike with a 25mph wind at your back, you can maintain 17-20mph with minimal effort. "This is a great way to recover," I told myself. "I should do this after every long race." We paused in Concord at the Old North Bridge where 244 years ago the American Revolution broke out in earnest and then made our way back along the historic battle road past the site where Paul Revere was captured to Lexington Battle Green where the first shots were fired. All in all, an appropriate way to spend the day after Patriot’s Day (the actual anniversary of the battle is this Friday, but the holiday is set to the third Monday in April). The Boston Marathon is always on Patriot’s Day, and although it follows a different route, it symbolically commemorated those events. Unlike most marathons which are loops, it goes from a place way out in the country to the center of the city, much as the Minutemen did when they chased the British back to Boston.

We got back after about 27 miles at which point I was feeling a little sorer than before. Each time we turned into the wind or even sideways to it I would be stunned by how hard biking had suddenly become and how much legs complained. I was late for lunch with Julia Ernst so I pounded the pedals for a couple more miles to meet her in Central Square. A few hours later I had to bike back to Harvard (into the wind) to meet my friends Elizabeth for first dinner, by which time my legs ached merely getting on and off the bike and my respiratory system began to exhibit flu or cold-like symptoms. Undaunted by either illness or the massive plate of Indian food I'd consumed, I headed across town for a second dinner with Rob Savitsky where I convinced myself that I could, in fact, finish a pile of BBQ pulled chicken with two sides of Mac and Cheese (waiter: what do you want for you two sides? Me: Mac and cheese! Waiter: And the other side? Me: Mac and cheese!) I could have taken the subway, but I was already late and calculated (incorrectly it turns out) that it would be quicker to bike. Riding back later that night all I could think of was bed, but my legs still responded somehow though my quads were groaning with each turn of the peddles, my calves burned, my lower left calve/Achilles felt inflamed. Maybe staying up till 3am catching up on dissertation work wasn’t the best idea. Maybe riding that many miles wasn’t a great idea. Maybe doing anything but lying on a coach after a marathon wasn’t a great idea. But hey, it sure was a beautiful ride.