Health + Fitness

How Do You Recover from a Bad Run?

It’s all in your head. And also in your body.

Whether you are training for a marathon, running a few miles three times a week to stay fit in middle age, or just starting out, it must be understood that not all runs are going to be works of art. There will be those in which you go further faster than you thought possible and you will get that elusive Runner’s High. But indeed, there will also be those that feel uncoordinated, unathletic, unagile, out of shape, and just downright awful.

Maybe you plow through those. Maybe you don’t. Either way, it’s not the fact that it happens, rather it’s how you deal with it that will make all the difference.

But before we can confront the mental challenge of lifting ourselves out of a bad run, it might help to define what constitutes “a good run”

Did you run further than usual or just further than you thought you could? Did you run a distance faster than usual or just faster than you thought you could? Did you discover a new route? Did you get in a groove and stay there longer than ever? Did you find a trail that challenged you and taught you something about yourself? Did you feel great throughout? Was it a long day at work and looking forward to your run was the thing that got you through it? Were you able to push yourself at that part where you usually stop and walk?

All of these things. If you can check one of them, I think we can call it a good run.

So then, what’s “a bad run”?

We’ve all had them. You were tight and tired from the beginning. You felt slow and sluggish. You gave up at the same place you always do. You couldn’t find a rhythm. Your breath was short throughout. It was a struggle to finish.

So what to do, once it’s finally over?

1) Sit with it for a bit. Or better, walk with it. Let the sweat pour off you. Don’t fight it, feel it. Talk to yourself. Use swear words if you must, but end by being kind to yourself. Don’t make any rash decisions.

2) Make mental notes about how you felt immediately before, during, and immediately after. Did you feel ready? Were you looking forward to it? Or did you have to force yourself? At what point did a shred of doubt about how you were feeling enter your brain? What did you do with this thought? At what point did you decide that it wasn’t going well? What do you think that did to your run?

3) Recall your mental and physical fitness in the last 24 hours. What was your sleep like the night before? How did you feel when you woke up? What did you eat, how much of it, and when? Did you have any alcohol yesterday? How much? How much time did you spend on work-related activities? Were you sitting all day? How much time on life-related chores? How much time did you devote to the unconscious use of social media? How much time did you spend on conscious mindfulness? These all play a role.

4) Stretch. Don’t wait with this, let it immediately follow your cool-down walk. This shouldn’t be seen as a quick sidebar to your workout, but a key component of it. In fact, a full yoga session might not be a bad idea at this point, for body, mind, and soul — especially if you curtailed your planned run.

5) Drink water. This should be obvious by now and if you haven’t heard this piece of advice, you might be living under a rock. Drink lots of it, especially if the run you just did was penance for the night before and you were using it to sweat out and exorcise whatever demons you put into yourself. Water will help flush the system of that stuff.

6) Eat. Get good things into your body. Fruits, vegetables, proteins. That bag of chips will only feel good for a second.

7) Don’t beat yourself up about it. It happens. Sometimes our bodies and minds aren’t ready when we want them to be, especially as we get older.

8) Use it as motivation for your next run. This isn’t going to turn you off running forever, right? Tomorrow, you will run again. Approach the next one like the previous one never happened.

9) Move on and run again. Be only in that moment.

I would imagine I’ve missed some things here and it’s true that everyone reacts and behaves differently. Let me know in the comments how you move past a bad run.

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