One of the things I like about trail running is that the training is far less structured than during the years when I ran competitively. However, this loose structure has also caught me out on more than one occasion. For instance, heading out on a new trail and having a planned 90-minute run turn into a 5-hour slog. These unexpected efforts require a special kind of recovery to stay injury-free.
If your legs are very sore the day after a big trail run, take a day off and get a massage or foam roller session. When you return to running, double your warm-up and make the run as easy as possible. Avoid running drills that involve skipping and jumping during a recovery phase.
Let’s take a closer look at all the ways you can minimize your chances of getting injured after doing an unexpectedly long or hard run out on the trails.
Maximizing Recovery After Running Too Long, Too Fast, Too Soon
The way to maximize recovery after going too long, too fast, too soon, in your trail running is by remembering that your biggest chance of getting injured is not during the run where you over-extended yourself. Your biggest chance of getting injured is during the run that follows after the one where you over-exerted yourself. That is because you have not yet recovered and carry soreness and fatigue into that second run.
If you remember this, in all likelihood you’ll be aware enough to know that you need to take a sufficient number of recovery days in order to be able to assimilate that one big effort into your fitness and not put yourself directly in the path of a potentially season-ending injury.
I’ve been there and I know what it’s like. Hopefully, by reading this you can learn from my mistakes and save yourself from the frustration of injury.
Too Long, Too Fast, Too Soon Causes Injuries
My track and field running coach always used to tell us that going too long, too fast, and too soon is the sure recipe for getting injured. He taught us that it wasn’t during the one massive training day that we were likely to get injured. It was when we went out training the next day without sufficient recovery to do another training session that would lead to injury.
About 12 years ago I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with professional Ironman distance athlete James Cunnama and he told me that the sessions they did at training camp would be either recovery from the previous day’s effort or preparation for the next day’s effort.
Take A Day Off After A Big Effort
We’ve all been there before. Whether it is trail running or another endurance sport, we have headed out on a particular day and felt so spectacularly good that we ended up going way further than what we originally intended on going.
Having a day where we’ve made a really big effort is not the end of the world. We must just be sensible enough to take a day off after one of those really big efforts. Even if your training program has something listed on it, if you’ve inadvertently had a really big training day, give yourself a day off before easing back into your training schedule.
That way you can stay injury free because getting injured will set you way further back in your training than taking one day off after a particularly heavy training day.
Do A Long Warmup When Restarting Training
Normally before a trail run, I’ll do an active warm-up of approximately 10 minutes. If I’ve had a really heavy training day and have taken a day off, when I get back into training, instead of doing a 10-minute warmup I’ll increase that warmup time to 20 minutes, and in some cases, it may even be a 30-minute warmup just to make sure that my muscles are fully and properly warm before I head out on my run.
Another benefit of this is that if there’s any muscle stiffness, I can work that stiffness out of my muscles during the course of the warmup so it shouldn’t hold me back when I’m out doing my actual trail run.
Another thing that I’ve seen is sometimes my body is feeling so broken that I need to take a second day off. The need for a second day off becomes apparent during the course of a longer warm-up and it saves me from heading out onto the mountain trails when I’m not yet recovered sufficiently to be able to train without a bigger injury risk.
Walk Before Running On First Run Back
Again when I’m easing back into my running after having taken a day or two off, besides my extra long warmup, I’ll begin that day’s run by simply walking for the first 2 miles. Again, this is to just ease my body back into movement.
After the walk, I’ll gradually step up into a very light jog, and then into a very slow run.
Vary Terrain Or Shoes
Another way to maximize my recovery is by running my really slow recovery run on a different surface from what I was doing for my big effort. An example of this would be if my big effort was on snow or soft sand then my recovery run might be on grass, gravel, or something firm.
Another way of adding variety to my recovery run is by wearing a different pair of shoes from the pair that I wore during the really big effort. I find that by doing this I can place slightly different strain on my feet and Achilles area compared to what would be the case if was wearing the same pair of shoes as I did during the big effort.
Maximize Recovery By Running At Your Slowest Possible Pace
Remember that the objective of this run is maximizing potential recovery. I do this by running at my slowest possible place. The way that I know my pace has been slow enough is when I get to the end of the run and feel as if it was a waste of time and I could head back out and repeat the whole run at a faster pace.
During my higher-intensity efforts, I’ll listen to music that pumps me up. While I’m doing a recovery run I will be listening to podcasts that help me improve my blogging skills. When I get back into actively making YouTube videos I’ll get a stabilizing gimbal for my phone and record videos of me talking to the camera while running.
Things I Won’t Do In A Recovery Phase
When I’m in a recovery phase after a race or a particularly heavy effort that was slightly out of character, there are a few things that I would never do, and I suggest that you don’t do either of these as well.
Don’t Run Hard
I know that this might sound incredibly obvious, but don’t run too hard during the recovery phase. I’m not just talking about the first workout that you head out on, but it’s also about focusing on recovery for the subsequent workouts.
Make sure that you keep all of those workouts at a really easy pace so that you can maximize your recovery as you gradually increase volume to where you were before.
Our athletics coach used to make us do our recovery runs so slowly that we could listen up our stiff muscles and nothing more. He wanted our muscles to be barely loose enough so that we could squeeze the lactic acid out of our muscles during our post-run stretch session.
In other words, the run intensity of our recovery runs was only just enough to be able to ease the muscle soreness that I had and no more.
Don’t Do Skill Drills
Normally our athletics coach would have us do skills/running form drills as part of every warmup and warm-down. However, when we were in a recovery phase we didn’t do any skills drills at all.
Running drills involve hops and skips which are very explosive movements. This is exactly why our coach forbade us from doing them during a recovery phase. Explosive movements involve greater impact and will increase the pain that you already have in your legs and potentially even set you up for injury.
So, leave those running form drills for a couple of days until you’re properly recovered and ready to get back into your normal training schedule.
Be Flexible With Distance/Time Of Recovery Run
Allow yourself to be flexible with the distance/time of your recovery runs. For instance, if your allotted time for a recovery run is 45 minutes and maybe you were hoping to complete 5 miles during that 45-minute period.
As you get near the end of your recovery run, you might realize that you are actually running slower than you had envisioned and that your 5 miles might take closer to 55 minutes.
What I’d do is rather cut my run short at 45 minutes rather than run those extra 10 minutes to complete the 5 miles. This short-term inconsistency in my mileage can actually help me to maintain long-term consistency by staying injury free and getting back to my regular training program much sooner.