22/05/2026
5 days after UTS50 and my legs honestly aren’t the main issue anymore. They took around 2-3 days to recover.
This is after 56km. 11,000+ feet of climbing. Technical terrain. 9+ hours of racing.
As a coach and therapist, the interesting part for me is what happens now post-race.
Most people expect recovery to feel linear. Sore for a few days, then gradually back to normal.
Reality is, it’s usually a bit messy.
After big events, you’re often juggling muscular damage, nervous system fatigue, disrupted sleep, inflammation, dehydration, appetite changes, mental fatigue… and sometimes all of them at once.
What catches a lot of runners out is that the legs often start feeling better before the rest of the system has properly recovered.
That’s usually the ‘danger window’.
It’s where people start forcing sessions again because “my legs feel alright now”, but easy runs still feel strangely hard, niggles begin creeping in, recovery is a bit crap, or motivation suddenly drops off.
Recovery isn’t just waiting for soreness to disappear.
It’s like its own training phase.
The goal isn’t just to feel normal again - it’s to actually absorb the stimulus of the event and adapt from it.
Honestly, a lot of runners aren’t undertrained.
They’re under-recovered.
And there’s a massive difference between the two.
This is why I don’t encourage racing too frequently so you don’t end up in a never-ending recovery cycle.
Ya know, the stuff your running app ain’t telling you…😉
