Post Race Recovery

After completing the marathon, we all headed to Maggiano's for an Italian feast. There were 14 of us and we were HUNGRY! So we ordered the classic family style meal. You select a bunch of stuff and they keep bringing it until you say stop. Here's what we ordered:
Stuffed Mushrooms
Bruschetta
Caesar Salad
Maggiano's salad (with bacon and blue cheese)
Chicken Parm
Four Cheese Ravioli
Chicken and Spinach manicotti
Pasta with Sausage
Tiramisu
Nonna's Pound cake

It was AWESOME! The pound cake is friggin amazing. Sounds like a simple maybe boring dessert, but the way they serve it is out of this world! It's toasted with a huge scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and some bananas and chocolate sauce. So yummy.
After dinner, we walked back to the car, I said bye to my mom and brother and Ann and Jack drove me home. I got home at 8:00 and was showered and in bed by 8:30. I wish I could say I slept great, but the sunburn I got kind of prevented that from happening. Lucky for me, I had Tuesday off and could just stay in my PJs all morning.

I got motivated (or bored with daytime TV) around 10am and decided to run to Target to pick up a frame for the Adidas poster I got at the expo. I walked around the store for a while and found the frame I wanted and then got a text from my friend Kim. Lunch at Life Alive? Why Yes, I think I would enjoy that. I swung by her house on my way home from Target and picked her up. She bought me lunch to celebrate my achievement and gave me a card and some homemade treats too! I have awesome friends!

After lunch I took a nap and watched a movie and basically did a whole lotta nothing. Then, you might think that the last thing I'd want to do after running a marathon would be go for a run, but that's exactly what I did. It was cold and drizzling (why couldn't we have that weather the day before???). I walked downtown to the Good Times 5K series and ran a pretty slow easy 5K. The first mile and a half was a little awkward, but then I found my groove and the legs loosened up. I finished in 28:32 (9:12 pace), not bad considering I ran a marathon the day before. I finished up waited to see if I won anything and then went home and straight to bed.

Wednesday, was back to reality and back to work. Why can't someone just pay me to run and write about it??? Oh well, gotta pay for my race registration fees somehow. I guess making drugs (that are approved by the FDA) will have to do for now. It was a long day, lots of congrats and telling people all about the race and re-playing it over and over again in my head and analyzing what I could have done differently. That's just how my brain works. Sure an 11 minute PR is great, but I KNOW I could have run faster.

My recovery continued after work with a little post-race acupuncture. Don't judge, I can't explain it and I don't know how it works but it does! Funny thing is one of my friends had the appointment right before me so obviously I'm not the only one that knows it works. I go to an awesome Acupuncturist, Peri Ozker. She has an office in Newton and one in Andover. Oh and she use to be my boss way back in the day before she left the biotech industry to study holistic medicine. She is amazing! I went to her after the garbage truck crash and before and after the Portland Marathon. She works magic and miracles. She focused on my quads and my sunburn and my little toe that is most definitely going to lose the nail. She did this crazy thing with tin foil and electrical current on my sunburn that seriously sounds like mad science, but IT WORKED! My sunburn doesn't hurt anymore and is way less red. And today my quads are significantly better. I can walk normal and go down stairs without a ton of pain and I can sit down without holding onto something to slowly lower myself down. :)

So, now that I'm on the road to recovery, you might be thinking what's next? Well, like a crack addict chasing a high, I'm onto the next event already. In two weeks I'll be doing an obstacle course race called Tough Mudder, then a half marathon Memorial Day weekend, a bunch of triathlons, another half marathon in July, a half Ironman in September, and then the Chicago Marathon in October. :)