4 Post-Marathon Tips for Faster Recovery

Recovering after a marathon takes time. Here are 4 recovery tips to begin as soon as you cross the finish line that will help you recover quickly.

The marathon is one of the world’s most popular athletic events, with 11 million runners participating each year. While the marathon is a universally loved racing distance, it’s also one of the hardest endurance events to train for. The risk of injury is high if the body isn’t ready, the marathon training cycle is long, and you only get so many chances to run a good one. In order to run a marathon well, you need to learn how to recover even better, to ensure you get to the start line healthy. And once you cross the finish line, prioritizing recovery time is key so you can bounce back for your next 26.2.

4 Post-Marathon Tips for a Fast Recovery

1) Immediately Post Race: Hydrate, Refuel & Avoid Static Stretching

When you’ve been pounding your feet on the pavement for 2 hours (probably closer to 4 since most runners finish around that mark on average), your body has experienced a fair amount of muscle damage. You’ll likely feel the heaviness of your legs settling in once you’ve finished, and over the course of the next few days you’ll experience delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), resulting in reduced muscle strength. Many people assume after a really long run, you should stretch and roll. However, when finishing a marathon this could cause further damage to the muscles, as you’ve already exacerbated them. It’s best to keep lightly moving and walking around, and any sort of sports massage or stretching should be done later once you’ve had plenty of time to rest and replenish. As for replenishment, it’s important to hydrate and refuel as soon as you can with a carbohydrate-rich snack and drink (bananas, dried fruit, pretzels, or an electrolyte drink work well). Within the next 1-2 hours, a hearty, balanced meal with protein, fat, and carbohydrates will deliver key nutrients to the body and set you on the right path towards recovery. Don't stretch until you've had some time to rest your body and recover. 

2) 1-7 Days After the Marathon: Prioritize Rest and Sleep

Even the most elite marathoners take rest days after the race. A few days off (or up to a week of no running) is recommended to allow your muscular and skeletal systems to repair. Returning back to baseline will vary from person to person, but monitoring key physiological markers such as resting heart heart (RHR) and heart rate variability(HRV) will help you determine the speed at which your body is recovering. WHOOP monitors these metrics and incorporates them into your daily recovery, so you can track your body’s progress and determine when it’s time to get back to training. It’s one thing to take a few days off from running, it’s another to make sure you’re getting quality sleep. Sleep consists of four sleep stages: Awake, light, REM, and deep sleep. Deep sleep is when your body repairs muscular and skeletal systems. Not getting enough deep sleep has a negative impact on your recovery. Adults should get at least 1-2 hours of deep sleep per night, however, your body might need more to speed the post-marathon recovery process. Prioritizing sleep is far more important than any kind of special recovery treatment you can get, as it’s the body’s most natural and efficient way to heal.  

3) Week 2: Active Recovery

Even if you’re taking time off from running, active recovery is still very important and will aid post-marathon recovery. What is active recovery? Active recovery focuses on low-impact exercises and movement to increase blood circulation, reawakening potentially stiff joints and tendons, and keeping you from being too antsy post-marathon. Most coaches will say you need up to 4 weeks to recover fully from a marathon before you can return to intense training. This is a perfect time to relax without any sort of strict mileage plan in place. Instead, you can walk, bike, swim, do yoga, or try a new activity you didn’t have time for when logging all those miles. When you’re ready, you can incorporate easy 30-60 minute runs, potentially within a week of completing your marathon.  

4) Test Recovery Behaviors During Your Training Cycle

Supplements, meditation and other behaviors may help you recover faster after a marathon. You can test different methods while training to find one or more that works best for you. In a survey of 14,613 WHOOP members who recorded 30 or more runs in the app in a three month period in 2021, the following recovery methods helped runners improve their daily recovery (with reduced RHR and increased HRV):

• Melatonin before bed
• Breathwork
• Magnesium
• Massage
• Meditation
• CBD (various forms)
• Stretching

By logging when they performed these behaviors in their WHOOP Journal, members were able to see which behaviors correlated to a higher WHOOP recovery in their Monthly Performance Assessments. It’s important to test which behaviors work for you during your training cycle so you have some go-to treatments after your marathon. For example, perhaps a 10-minute ice bath following your weekly long run helps reduce inflammation and boosts your HRV the following morning. Additional behaviors logged by WHOOP members in this survey included acupuncture, cupping, cryotherapy, and red light therapy. Paired with quality sleep, well-rounded nutrition, and active recovery, choosing a handful of beneficial recovery behaviors will efficiently get your body back to baseline, and you’ll be even stronger for your next marathon. Learn More: Running Heart Rate Zones & 4 Essential Runs to Train Smarter