Lottery Luck

Although I haven't really been running much since CIM, I've been eagerly planning my race schedule for 2011 (where the heck did 2010 go?!). While I mentioned my ultrarunning plans and triathlon goals, a couple of hopeful races are not guaranteed. Enter: race lotteries. This past week I put in for both the Way Too Cool 50k and New York City Marathon lotteries and my fingers have been crossed since! I'm hoping to run Cool as both my first ultra and trail race, and also as a training run for AR 50 the following month. As far as NY, that's been on my wish list since I started running, and since I didn't get in last year, I've entered my name again. If I get in, I plan to make New York my goal fall marathon and train hard for a PR. I'll find out about WTC this Wednesday, but New York won't be until March, so I'll have to try and be patient. Wish me luck! Anyone else put in for these races or entered any other race lotteries?

Yesterday morning I went for my first run post-CIM and it wasn't pretty. The lingering soreness in my legs had mostly disappeared by the end of the week and I was getting sort of antsy to do something. So when my coworker asked if I wanted to run Saturday morning, I thought I'd give it a shot and see just how recovered I was. We set out to do 5 miles on my usual loop along the American River, and immediately my legs felt heavy and I was just tired. I thought maybe I just needed to warm up, but after a couple miles I knew it just wasn't going to be a good run. I felt like I was exerting my usual effort and keeping up a good pace, but when I looked down at my Garmin I was running a whole minute slower than usual! We ended up cutting it short to 4 miles, partly due to a time crunch and partly due to my lack of energy. During the last couple miles I also had some pain in my hip joint, so I was more than ready to be done. Later at work, I noticed that my calves had also become seriously tight. Looks like I wasn't quite ready to run, so I'll be sticking to light cross-training for a few more days before I get back on the pavement, including a hot yoga session today to stretch out my tight muscles. How long do you usually take to recover after a marathon?