After running a hundred miles, twice as far as I’d ever run at one time, recovery felt like unknown territory. I’d naively told Amy that I wanted to take a break from coaching after the hundo, to see what it would be like to coach myself for a while. But now I was realizing that recovery was possibly the most important phase of training, and I felt a bit scared and intimidated. Amy had left me a week’s worth of guidance, which consisted of different forms of the admonition, “Don’t run.”

Actually it was a little more nuanced. Monday: “Eat, hydrate, rest;” Tuesday: “Again, focus on getting plenty of food and drinks… and nothing else!” Wednesday: “Eat, drink, perhaps walk a mile or two if that feels okay.” Thursday: “Again, walk a short bit if it feels okay, and then get in some stretching.” Friday: “Day off, rest!” Saturday: “Get out for a hike or walk, nothing crazy.” Sunday: “Yup, respect the recovery. Walking a bit okay.” And then I was on my own.

Not running certainly wasn’t hard on Monday, the day after finishing the run, as my Garmin logged about two hours of sleep the night before. It’s a little bit cruel that after running for 27 hours and missing a night of sleep, the following night the body isn’t able to sleep.

I respected the recovery as well as I could. Around Wednesday I started walking to work, which is around a mile both ways. Most of the muscular soreness was gone, and my joints felt fine, though my left Achilles was sore. I felt generally tired, though, and I didn’t have to exercise too much restraint not to run. Mostly I wanted to recover well, so I could keep running, and maybe actually run a hundred-mile race in October, three months out.

I’d raced a fifty in late May, and recovered well, continued my build and felt great for the hundred—wouldn’t recovery from the hundred be similar? After all, I hadn’t actually raced it.

Turns out, not really. 

Not running much does allow time for other things. The weekend after the hundo we went to Boston, visiting our old neighborhoods, went to a birthday party at a plaza in Somerville that hadn’t existed when I was there, and went on a whale watch out of Boston Harbor. I didn’t run all weekend!

That following Monday I ran four miles, which felt pretty good, but the Achilles was niggling. Used the foam roller and did yoga the next day, but then started to obsess with whether the yoga had irritated the Achilles. So Wednesday I cycled for the first time in months. Then a day off, and Friday and Saturday six and four mile runs. Maybe too much. The Achilles felt sore, probably insertional tendinopathy.

I’m pretty neurotic when it comes to niggles and injuries, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate this part of me. It keeps me from overdoing it. I know runners who have really damaged their Achilles tendons by continuing to run and climb serious vert in spite of injury, and I had visions of being reduced to short runs around the neighborhood for the rest of my life.

Age is relative, but as an oldish runner I’m quite aware that my glorious days of epic runs through forests and mountains won’t go on forever. I also know that many runners continue to run through their sixties and even seventies. I want to be one of those runners.

This recovery seemed to take a long time, and I waffled between worrying about my Achilles and obsessing with how much and what kind of exercise I could do, and fantasizing about racing. Maybe I should try to do a hundred that would get me into the Western States lottery for next year! Maybe just do Midstate Massive this year and then Grindstone next year to get running stones for the UTMB lottery! Or maybe run Black Canyon in Arizona, and experience that amazing landscape.

I took another week of roller skiing, cycling and resting, then ran with friends while visiting Montpelier, probably too long and too much vert. Achilles was not happy, but it was great to share a run on some lovely trails.

The town I grew up in is recovering, too. The flooding that cancelled the Vermont 100 left Montpelier’s downtown in several feet of water, damaging most of the stores and shops. My high school building was an island in the flood. Sunday morning I ran through the downtown, past the Pavilion Building that houses the Vermont History Museum, thick white ventilation tubes snaking from upper story windows; down Langdon Street, home to both Onion River Outdoors, the sports shop that has served running and cycling and Nordic skiing athletes since I was a kid, and Buch Spieler, the record store. Onion River was empty, with a dumpster outside, and the statue of death outside Buch Spieler said it all.

After another week of roller skiing, resting, cycling, and resting, the Achilles felt worse. I scoured the internet for information about rehabbing tendinopathy and started to develop a theory. While most of the literature advises resting tendons when injured, it’s also clear that continuing to move is important, as it keeps blood circulating to the tendons, which don’t have as prolific a network of blood vessels as other tissues.

So I developed a plan to start running more consistently, albeit short, easy distances. It was already the fourth week of recovery, and I was holding off on making any decisions about races, refusing offers to run mountainous trails with friends, and I was getting a bit restless. But the plan worked. The pain in my Achilles almost immediately started to remit. Was it more running, or just the effect of time, rest and cross training? Always hard to tell with an N of one. But I suspect that because this body is so used to running, going back to more consistent easy running was actually helpful.

Yesterday, four-and-a-half weeks out, I actually ran a fartlek, just putting in some longer surges to see how the body would respond. I felt quite out of speed shape, but the Achilles felt good.

I’ve had to run close to home this week, as I’ve had a kid who was not happy with camp. The upside is that Claire has been joining me for a half mile loop around the block at the end of each run–so great to run with your kid!

The recovery continues. Hopefully I’ll run some longer trails this weekend, as we travel up to Vermont again for a more extended visit. I’ll need to pay close attention to how the body responds to more mileage and vert, back off as needed. It’s still a mystery as to how much I might be able to build before tapering down for another long effort, or whether that will even feel prudent, but it finally feels like I’m out of the woods. I will go long again, sooner or later.