Granted, my race wasn't normal either. You can read the full race report here, but I'll summarize my day with this statement:
When you are running and your forearms are sore it’s because your body has pulled all the glycogen out of them. When your body is resorting to finding glycogen in your forearms you are seriously fucked.So, yeah, I think it's reasonable to presume that I finished the race with maybe close to zero glycogen reserves in my body. Here are some other facts supporting my hypothesis:
(1) I ended up in the med tent with mild hypothermia after the race. I mean, it was maybe 65-70 degrees on the run course versus the surface-of-the-sun 90-95 degree temps we typically see on race day, but that really shouldn't be hypothermia territory unless you've fucked your body over pretty good.
(2) I was sore as all fuck for days after the race, which usually indicates that you ran really hard. Except that I clocked a 5:36 marathon, which clearly shows that there was not nearly enough running involved to warrant being that sore.
(3) I was exhausted, I mean, exhausted, and in a complete brain fog of stupidity, for a solid five days post-race. It was all I could do to drag myself through each day, and I routinely trailed off mid-sentence because I'd lost my train of thought. From five words ago. Brain function was massively lacking.
What I should have done in the days immediately post-race was to routinely, three times a day if not more frequently, stuff my face with pasta and pizza and ice cream and in doing so, begin to replenish my glycogen stores. What I did do was eat some pasta and some ice cream maybe once or twice and then I went back to eating more like someone who wasn't doing any training. Because, in my oh-so-twisted-brain, I hadn't run enough on the race course to have earned stuffing my face more than that. Oh FFS, what on earth is wrong with me?
Post-Race, Week Two
At this point, I'd finally regained normal cognitive function and the overall fatigue had lifted. I was on vacation, mostly eating fish tacos (which don't do much by way of replenishing glycogen stores) and, for reasons I cannot explain, not drinking nearly enough wine (which would have been a fabulous way to replenish glycogen stores). I hit the treadmill on two quiet, rainy afternoons and after the second run I was thinking that my legs felt a little more crushed than they should. But other than that, I was feeling pretty good/normal and ready to get back to training.Post-Race, Week Three
I had signed up for IM 70.3 Boulder weeks (months?) before IM Boulder, to make sure I got in before it sold out. The 70.3 is eight weeks after the full, which may sound nuts but it's actually an awesome way to PR and that's exactly what I'd done in 2017. So two weeks post-IM it was time to hit training again and get dialed in for HIM pacing and fitness.Monday was fine. Tuesday was a little sluggish. Wednesday's bike intervals - usually where I shine - were a total, complete, spectacular fail. I barely survived the first interval, bumped down the second, struggled through maybe 2/3 of the third while dropping the power every minute, and only lasted a single minute of the final interval, and at reduced watts no less. This could not be more atypical of how I handle bike intervals.
So Coach and I talked and we shortened the weekend bike to 1:45 with a little run off the bike, cut the long run back to 30 minutes, and decided I should eat pasta for five straight days. I took the swim easy Thursday, hopped on my bike Friday and barely survived 1:30. Three weeks prior to this, I had biked my strongest 112 miles ever, and this week I couldn't even last 2 hours. Oh FFS, what on earth was wrong with me?
Post-Race, Week Four
Week four felt pretty normal! Had some decent bikes, including the Wednesday intervals, and some solid runs, including 9 hilly miles over the weekend. Sure the run was slow and the long bike felt a little sluggish, and it had been a rocky four weeks, but it can sometimes take that long to recover from an Ironman and at least I was feeling better now. And while I wasn't quite hitting HIM paces or distances, I still had a couple of weeks to get back to that before 70.3 Boulder.Post-Race, Week Five
The week went pretty well through Thursday. Bike intervals were strong and I even hit some pretty decent paces during a progression run. So I was feeling pretty hopeful on Friday heading out for my long ride - 3 hours with some HIM efforts thrown in for good measure, plus a decent run off the bike - except that I absolutely could not put down any watts. I felt like I was really working, and yet I was 10 watts shy of my Ironman watts that had come so easily five weeks ago. Those HIM efforts were never, ever going to happen. I texted coach 90 minutes into the ride to let her know I was a disaster and was maybe just going to ride back to my car. Why I actually stayed on my bike for 3+ hours and even ran for 10+ minutes after is anyone's guess. It's certainly not because the workout quality improved at all.But the next morning I headed out for my run with an open, optimistic mindset - because you for real never know what your legs will do if you ask them nicely. (Or yell at them. Yelling works too.) Legs were cranky the first mile and felt like absolute shit the second. By mile five my gait was uncoordinated and I called it and headed home. So much for a 2 hour run with HIM pacing.
Post-Race, Week Six
This week was do or die - either I was able to train like a normal 70.3-capable person or I wasn't. To say that I was cranky about my predicament is a massive understatement. Monday I had a decent endurance ride, but Tuesday's run felt awful and I couldn't for the life of me hit anything resembling a normal pace in the pool. When I still felt like shit in the pool on Thursday, I called it and offically decided to scratch the 70.3. Which turned out to be the right move, since my week got worse from there - I didn't even survive 2 hours at generally pathetic watts on Friday's ride, and Saturday's 6-mile run required eight - eight!!! - walk breaks.While I knew that scratching the race was the right call, it was frustrating as fuck. How was it possible that six weeks ago I'd completed 140.6 miles (granted, 13 or maybe 24 of them were really fucking ugly) and now I couldn't even complete half that? Oh FFS, what on earth was wrong with me?!?!?
What the Actual Fuck?
Before you start composing a scathing text/email explaining that I should've had my iron checked and then eaten an entire cow, I will tell you that I did have a full blood panel done in week seven, and it all came back normal. So that's not what the fuck was going on.The way I've ultimately made sense of what may well be The Longest Recovery in Ironman History is to think of it through the lens of an injury rather than recovery. Compared to my recovery from IM Boulder 2017, this was a horse of an entirely different color. Two weeks after IMB'17, I started panic training for Triple Bypass; three weeks after the race I rode up Maroon Bells as part of a 3 hour ride; four weeks after I did the Boulder Peak; eight weeks after I PR'd at the 70.3 distance, on virtually the same course that I'd set the prior PR so you can't even handicap it (and before you say anything, I already handicapped for the short bike course). Eight weeks after IMB'19 I couldn't have even completed 70.3 miles, let alone PR'd it.
So instead of thinking that I was simply recovering from an Ironman, I should've been thinking that I was recovering from an injury. Because while I didn't pull a hamstring or strain my Achilles, plundering my glycogen stores as badly as I did seems to have resulted in what I'm going to call a metabolic injury.*
A typical injury narrative is to (1) get injured, (2) take a few days or weeks easy and feel better, (3) try to come back too soon, which leads to (4) a mild to massive setback, and then (5) a repeat of steps 2 through 4. And that pretty well sums up my weeks post-Ironman. I can't necessarily tell you what a metabolic injury is, but I can tell you that roughly two weeks of eating all the food plus dramatically reducing time and intensity for workouts makes a massive difference. Eight weeks post-race I finally started to feel like myself again during workouts, and nine weeks post-race the injury seems to be a thing of the past. Only bummer is that I've now lost all of my Ironman fitness. Oh FFS.
*The idea of a "metabolic injury" was suggested by my neighbor Laura. I have no idea if it's a real thing or what it would be if it was, but I'm going with it.