Boston blowup recovery timeline

Take as much time off as you need and when you do start back up be very conservative with it - you can't rush fitness so you might as well ensure health by taking it slow. Then for your next marathon be more realistic with yourself and your pacing.

Don't try to run for the rest of the week. Take baby walking steps and learn to walk again gradually.

I think I was overtrained. I ran a 1:18 half in October but went downhill after that, culminating in this Boston blowup. I had a 2:47 PR from last year, but was clearly nowhere near that level of fitness today. How long after your marathon until you felt you were running well again?

There's no way I'll be able to run this week. Not even gonna try to run for at least the next two weeks, probably longer

brings back memories from 2013

Sorry to hear about the race. You actually might bounce back faster than you'd expect. When the body shuts down like that, it actually saves itself from damage/exhaustion you might otherwise get. I've had races go extremely well, but it's taken a full 4 weeks to truly recover when my body has let me completely empty the tanks. When I've had poor races, including once at Boston myself, when the acute pain wore off I was actually ready to train again within a week. Two different kinds of recovery if you will.

I took 10 days totally off because I was truly knackered. Like, didn't feel normal while simply existing type of messed up from the race. I was back running workouts normally after about 2 months, but everyone is different.

Just depends on what you want to do next OP. If you wanted to run another marathon in 2-4 weeks you totally could do that on a reverse taper. But idk how much sense that makes since you said training was inconsistent.

The weather didn't end up being as good as people thought it was going to be today. The heat got to a lot of people. I saw a good # of blow ups. So I would just put this behind you. There's always the temptation to just get back into training & hammer some runs. That'll end up doing more damage. I would take a week or so off. Whatever you're used to. 1-2 weeks. It's ok to do some light cross training activities. Nothing for time or speed. Then take 2 weeks of ez running (no workouts) after you come back from the break. 1st week might be running every other day. 2nd week more normal. I usually go ~month before adding in a light workout. Reset & recharge.

Yep. I blew up too. You weren't alone. Temps were hot. Had it stayed cloudy, it would have been a whole lot better. Rough way to run an early season marathon. Don't feel too bad about it.

You will have recovered when you feel like running fast again without feeling like you are pushing. It could take a month or longer, depending on how burnt you are. Just take it slow for a while and one day you’ll notice something is different; that is, you feel strong.

My first marathon I made the stupid mistake I was in sub 2:40 shape because my college mid-long distance times suggested I should be comfortably doing that off of decent mileage (turns out when you are anatomically built for running 1-4 laps your muscle fiber distribution and glycogen use efficiency isn’t gonna be as good as you hope)

Split 1:17 and 1:38 with a violent bonk at about mile 20/21 and it took about 1 week to be able to run faster than 9:00 pace again, another 2 weeks to work down to the usual 7:00-7:30 pace easy volume, and another week to be efficiently running workouts and mileage again.

Expect to basically feel injured for the next few days, it’s probably gonna be very hard to walk and get out of bed. It’s okay though, use it as an excuse to be a lazy POS who lays in bed all day and doordashes food every meal, you’ve earned it!