Marathon Recovery: What to Do Before Your Race, While You Travel, and After the Finish

Episode: S6E31 | Hosts: Coach Amanda Katz and Coach Nick Klastava | Aired October 8, 2026 | 56 min

Author: Nick Klastava

Podcast Hosts: Nick Klastava & Amanda Katz

Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Marathon recovery is the part of training everybody claims to respect and almost nobody plans. We plan the long runs. We plan the workouts. We plan the carb load down to the Pop Tart. Then the race ends and the plan just stops, and the weeks before the race get treated like a waiting room instead of the most important recovery window of the whole cycle. This week it was just Coach Amanda and me, no guest, and the timing was perfect because Amanda had just run her fall marathon the weekend before we recorded. So we took recovery apart from both ends: what you do in the taper and on the trip to protect the race you trained for, what you do in the first few hours after you cross the line, and how you handle the days, weeks, and feelings that come after. If you are racing Chicago this weekend, stop refreshing the forecast. Some of this is for you too.

Key Takeaways

Recovery is not just a post race thing. The taper, the travel, and the 48 hours before the gun are a recovery phase, and treating them that way changes how the first miles of the race feel.

Sleep across the whole block matters far more than sleep the night before. If you have been sleeping well for months, one bad night before the race is not going to sink you.

Bring your own food when you travel. A cooler with your practiced carb load foods beats hunting for a restaurant in a strange city on the most important eating days of the cycle.

Compression socks are better than calf sleeves for long flights or drives. Save the sleeves for race day if you like them.

Protect your social battery, not just your legs. Six shakeouts, three meetups, and a full day at the expo is a physical and mental cost you pay on race day.

Have a post race fueling plan before you start. Big city races rarely give you real food, and waiting more than an hour or two to eat will make the next several days much harder.

Take real time off. Amanda typically prescribes 10 days to two weeks with no running. I take a minimum of seven days, then run only when I want to.

Feeling flat or sad after a goal race is normal. Give yourself space to process the result before announcing the next goal.

Marathon Recovery Starts Before the Start Line

Here is the reframe I wanted listeners to walk away with. Everyone thinks about what they will do after the race to feel better faster and get back to running. Very few people think about recovery in the two or three weeks before the race, and that is where a lot of races are won or lost before anyone fires a gun.

Amanda laid out the taper the way she coaches it. Your last longest long run and your last big workout usually land two to three weeks out. After that, your body is absorbing the fitness you spent the last 12, 16, or 20 weeks building. You are not adding anything new. You are not trying to bank an extra 10,000 steps on a rest day. Her words on the recording were basically "no, no, no, no, no," and I agree with all five of them.

The reason this matters is how the race feels early. How many times have you started a marathon, felt heavy at mile three, and immediately decided the taper did not work and the whole day is ruined? Some athletes can hold it together until their legs come around. Plenty of others spiral three miles in because it feels terrible. A lot of the time, the cause is not the taper. It is everything we piled on top of the taper in the final week. Doing the right things beforehand gets you to the start line in a state where the first miles feel like they should.

Sleep Before a Marathon: Stop Trying to Fix It the Night Before

The most common question Amanda gets in race week is some version of "what if I do not sleep the night before?" Her answer is that recovery is not about the night before, or even two nights before. It is about how you have been sleeping, resting, and eating over the weeks and days leading into race day, and that is where the meaningful effect lives.

I see the other side of this a lot. An athlete tells me they get four hours of sleep a night for the whole block, but they are really going to lock in before the race. That ship has sailed. You are not fixing months of short sleep with one early bedtime. The better plan is boring: sleep well through the entire training cycle. Then a couple of rough nights before the race are not ideal, but you will mostly be fine.

I personally get my worst sleep of the year the night before a marathon, and I have accepted it. When am I supposed to go to bed? Seven o'clock so I can get up at three, eat, and walk to the start area? It is not happening. I still go to bed around ten or eleven, get a few hours, and write that night off. Some people can force themselves to sleep at eight. If that is already your normal bedtime, congratulations, you are locked in. For the rest of us, the night before is a throwaway and the 30 nights before are what count.

Traveling to a Destination Race: Pack Your Own Food

Amanda drove to her race this time with her dad, who is her one and only race weekend companion. The rest of the family stays home. It is dad and Amanda time, two introverts in the racing wild, and he knows her pre race and post race routines well enough to protect them. Mostly that means keeping her off her feet.

The drive landed on day two of her carb load, which she has practiced every week in training, so she brought a cooler with everything she planned to eat: bagels, Pop Tarts, chocolate milk, bananas, snacks, and plenty of fluids. No guessing where to stop. No settling for a gas station meal on the most important eating day of the cycle.

I used to think this was overkill. Years ago I rode to a race with a friend who was eating food he had made at home out of a Tupperware container, and I asked him why he was doing that. Many years later I get it completely. Having what you want, made the way you want it, is so much better than trying to figure out where to eat in a city you do not know. I always pack the snacks that matter to me, and yes, there is always a box of Pop Tarts involved.

Flying is trickier, especially with gels. Amanda says she has always gotten food through security in a cooler as long as it is solid and any ice is frozen. Gels can get confiscated depending on the agent. When my kids were small, every gel in my bag was for the baby. My baby loved Maurten. Your mileage may vary, so check the current TSA rules before you fly and pack anything irreplaceable in a way that will survive the checkpoint.

Compression Socks vs. Sleeves for Travel

Amanda added something new to her race travel this cycle: compression socks for the drive. She already wears her CEP compression socks every time she flies, even when she is not racing, but she had never thought to wear them on the way to a race. It made the trip feel better, and it is now part of her routine.

I am a big compression fan. If you have seen any of my race photos, I am wearing calf sleeves, and I wear them on almost every long run because I like how they feel and I feel better after. But for a long flight I wear socks, not sleeves. A sleeve compresses the calf and leaves the foot open, so blood can push down and collect in the foot during hours of sitting. A full sock compresses the whole lower leg including the foot, which is the better option for a plane or a long drive. On race day I prefer sleeves so I can wear my own running socks. Two different tools for two different jobs.

Protect Your Social Battery During Race Week

This is the recovery nobody talks about. Are you building downtime into your race trip? If you normally get a few hours at home where you do absolutely nothing, are those hours anywhere on your race weekend schedule, or are you doing things with people from breakfast until bedtime?

Races are social, and I love that about them. But if 70 people you know are in town, it is easy to feel like you need to see every one of them, hit six group shakeouts, and spend the afternoon walking the expo. That is a physical cost, and it is also a mental one. How much of your social and mental capacity you burn before the race matters. Do it in moderation. You do not want to throw away a race because you did too much in the 48 hours before it.

Amanda is the opposite case study, and I think a lot of listeners will relate to her. She is an introvert. She spends her training cycle running with friends, and that is where she gets her social time. On race weekend she does not want to interact with anyone except her people, which means her dad, the Wegmans cashier, and the woman at the laundromat. She does not post about her races or tell anyone where she is running. That privacy is hers, and it protects her energy. Her point, which I want to underline, is that energy is a resource. Spend it on purpose.

The Shakeout Run: How Much Is Enough Before a Race

After a long drive or flight you are going to feel stiff, and some movement helps. Amanda was clear that a shakeout is not about fitness. Nobody is adding fitness by jogging 20 minutes with a few strides at the end. The point is to loosen up and burn off nervous energy. Some of her athletes like meeting up with a few teammates for it, and she is planning a little gathering for her runners racing Chicago and New York.

Her prescription for the day before is about 20 minutes easy with some strides at the end, with the strides no faster than marathon pace. Some of her runners do not want to run at all and would rather walk or spin on a bike, and that is fine too. The intention matters more than the format. Get it done in the morning, then stay off your feet, prioritize carbohydrates and fluids, and spend the rest of the day feeling proud of the work you did to get there. Race day is one day, and so much of it is out of your control. Control what you can the day before.

I like running the day before. Around 30 minutes, never longer, with strides as a game time decision. My athletes are split between a day off and a day on, and both work. After a long flight, like the seven or so hours of travel to CIM, I always get in a walk or an easy run that day to shake my legs out. I am the guy who sits in the window seat and does not get up for the entire flight because I do not want to bother anyone. Amanda has offered to coach me on how to be on a plane, and apparently the correct answer is a few polite laps up the aisle, not a lunge circuit. Fine. Point taken. I have moved to the aisle seat.

What You Watch and Read the Day Before Matters Too

Amanda's day before her race looked like this: a farmers market with her dad, a short trail walk that she cut off at about ten minutes because she was not trying to clock steps, and then back to the hotel shortly after lunch to put her feet up and read. She was reading Olive Kitteridge. Not a running book. Not a running documentary. Something that brought her peace.

I used to watch Without Limits, the Steve Prefontaine movie, before every race. Then I realized it got me so fired up that I had to spend the rest of the night trying to calm down and sleep. Before my last race I watched Mean Girls instead. It has nothing to do with running and it was relaxing, and I have stuck with that kind of thing since. Your nervous system needs recovery before a marathon too, so pick media that settles you down instead of revving you up.

Marathon Recovery in the First Two Hours After the Finish

Once you cross the line, you are in a new phase of training, and it is called recovery. It is not the start of your next training cycle. You just asked your body for a lot. Muscle damage, connective tissue stress, inflammation, and a stressed nervous system are all part of what finishing a marathon means. Amanda's framing is that this is the time to ask how you can repair your body right now, not what is next.

Her order of operations: selfie, then snack. Your appetite will probably be low. That is normal, and you are not special because you are not hungry. Eat anyway, because post race nutrition is functional. Right away, something simple like chocolate milk and a banana. Within about an hour, a real meal with carbohydrate and protein, plus fluids and electrolytes. Then keep eating consistently through the rest of the day and the next couple of days to replenish glycogen, even if your appetite is weird. We did a full episode with Megan on post race nutrition if you want the deeper version.

And keep moving. Amanda cringes when she sees someone finish a marathon and immediately sit down. Walk. If you are running New York, you will not have a choice, because between Staten Island and getting out of Central Park you will cover something like 27 or 28 miles that day.

Post Race Fueling at Big City Marathons: Make a Plan

This is where I went on a rant, and I stand by it. Big races need better post race food. Finish Boston and good luck getting through the gates, finding your family, and getting into a restaurant or even a takeout line any time soon. The finish line hands you water, a sports drink, a banana, and a granola bar that turns to dust when you touch it. I just drank fluids for 26 miles. I do not want more Gatorade. I would honestly take a recovery shake with carbs and protein over the free beer, although I will drink the beer because it is there.

Since the race probably will not feed you, you have to plan it yourself. If you are solo, pack something you trust in your gear check bag that will survive being thrown around. If family is coming, ask them to bring something that does not need to be hot and hand it to you as soon as they find you. Amanda does exactly this for major races. The day before, she gives her support person a cooler with a bagel and egg sandwich, a protein shake, and a Coke. Carbs, protein, done. If it tastes better warm, she wraps it in foil so they can heat it up.

Her other move is scouting the finish area ahead of time. In New York there is a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe's, diners, and bagel shops within walking distance of the finish. It is not as unhinged as it sounds to walk into one of them in a heat sheet. Local races are often better than majors here, with real food like bagels and pizza at the finish. It is mostly the World Majors where this becomes a problem.

I can tell you from experience how much this matters. The races where I finished, chatted with friends, sipped a random drink I did not want, and then waited four hours for a lunch reservation were the ones where I felt terrible that day, the next day, and for days after. The races where I got food in right away and kept walking felt dramatically better. After a 50K with friends where we fueled well during the run and walked straight to a meal afterward, I felt great all week, even after 32 miles on my feet.

Amanda put the stakes plainly. You can gamble with an hour. You can maybe gamble with two. Go beyond that and you are playing with fire. Good luck walking down stairs or getting off a toilet because you decided you were not hungry after slamming gels all morning. It is that important, especially if this is your first marathon. And here is a coaching hack nobody else will give you for free: if you are well ahead of PR pace, or having a rough day anyway, grab a bagel off a spectator table around mile 25 and carry it to the finish. That is what banked time is for.

There is also a longer term cost. Skipping post race fueling is not just about feeling rough on Monday. It can show up weeks later as an injury when you start training again, which turns a great result into a frustrating spiral. Treat the first few hours as part of the race.

Marathon Recovery Week by Week: How Long to Rest After a Marathon

Amanda's big message for the days after the race is that feeling fine does not mean you are recovered. On a cellular level, your body is damaged. Not as an insult, just as physiology. Research on marathon finishers consistently shows elevated markers of muscle and even cardiac stress in the hours and days afterward, which is one reason you should not schedule routine blood work right after a race and expect clean numbers. Plenty of runners also feel run down or a little more prone to catching something in the days after a marathon, which is another reason rest, sleep, and food matter so much in this window.

Her typical prescription is 10 days to two weeks of no running. Mine is seven days minimum, every time, and then I do not run until I actually feel like running. Sometimes I start, get two runs in, decide I am not ready, and take another three days off. Marathon recovery can be fluid. It does not need a rigid schedule.

I asked Amanda where she finds athletes who want to rest longer, because mine start negotiating with me after four days. Her answer is that she changes people. The runners who come to her doing cross training sandwiches and Pilates on rest days are the same ones who eventually ask if it is okay to take a few more days off. It is encouraged. Wanting to run again is healthy. Being able to pause, enjoy life, and wait until that want is real is a sign of maturity as a runner.

What fills that time? Gentle walks, mobility, stretching, a visit to your PT, recovery boots if you own them, a massage, compression socks, errands. Keep all of it easy. Neither of us puts walks on a schedule. Amanda lives in a big city and somehow ends up at 8,000 steps without trying. I walk when I want to, which usually means trying to get my kids to come along and ending up surrounded by scooters and bikes because walking is apparently not a thing to them.

Why Runners Rush Back, and Why It Backfires

The problem with recovery after any distance is that people do not want to lose their fitness. If the race went great, they want to hold that fitness forever. If it went badly, they do not want to let it slip because they worked so hard for it. That is not how any of this works. Fitness that never gets a chance to recover does not stay forever anyway. You might stretch it a few more weeks or one more block, but eventually it falls apart.

Most of us take years to reach our potential. It is commonly cited that runners tend to peak somewhere around six or seven years into consistent training, and that timeline already includes downtime and injuries, because those come for everyone. So ask yourself whether you really want to risk that long arc to hold onto fitness for one more race in the short term. Let the body recover and set up the next goal properly.

It also takes longer to feel sharp again than most people expect. After my PR at CIM, it took about eight weeks before a workout felt normal. I was running in that window, but the ability to push, the long runs feeling strong, all of that took time to come back. That is completely normal.

And the mental side is real. I feel dumb after a marathon. After CIM, a local news crew interviewed me at the finish, and not only did nothing I said make sense, the caption spelled my name N-C-I-K K-A-L-S-T-A-V-A. Everyone knows how to spell Nick. I am fairly confident I gave them that spelling myself. Your brain needs recovery too. Amanda pointed out that even forming sentences is hard after a marathon, and that is not just a joke.

Marathon Recovery Tools: What Actually Helps

Amanda asked what is in my toolbox and then answered her own question first, which she admitted is her biggest pet peeve. Her top three recovery tools are eating enough, sleeping enough, and not running. Everything else is whatever feels good. For her that includes acupuncture (she describes her relationship with her acupuncturist as committed, and the relationship is needles), red light, recovery boots, compression socks, and a deep tissue massage a couple of weeks out. Also getting her nails done. Does that have anything to do with her legs? No. Self care is self care.

Mine overlap a lot. I used to get massages all the time when I was younger, and now that I probably need them more, I barely get them. I will sometimes book one after a race. I wear compression socks around the house for days, and the more my kids tell me to stop, the harder I wear them. I prioritize sleep that week and actually try to be in bed by eleven, which is not usually my reality. I lobby hard for movie night instead of whatever activity the kids had planned.

And I eat more than normal. This is the one people forget. They go right back to regular eating after the race. I know you just carb loaded for three days and now I am asking you to keep eating, but you can eat different things now. A big salad with protein and some carbs in it. Foods you avoided before the race. The tissue damage and wear from the marathon heal faster when you fuel the repair.

The Post Marathon Blues Are Part of Recovery

Amanda closed with the point I think matters most, and it ties back to a conversation we have had before with Dr. Stephanie Roth Goldberg. After a goal race, it is very normal to feel periods of sadness and to feel lost about what you are shooting for next. That is true whether you hit your goal and want to call your coach tomorrow to plan the next thing, or you are disappointed in the result.

Her advice is to give yourself space to process. Pause. Maybe journal. Do not rush into planning the next block. Just exist in the moment and think about how hard you worked to get there, regardless of the outcome. That will feel uncomfortable for most runners. Do not isolate yourself either. Engage with people and activities outside the sport. Being still is a skill, and the more you practice it, the better you get, both after races and in your life as a runner and a human.

I see the opposite all the time on social media. Someone runs a PR and announces the next goal, five minutes faster, the same week. You worked really hard for this. Let it sit. I always tell athletes to be proud before the race even starts, because if your pride depends on a PR, it shows up too late and adds a ton of pressure. Be proud going in. Be proud coming out, no matter what the clock says. There is plenty of time for the next thing, and you will bring much better energy and focus into the next block if you give this one a proper ending.

Host Bios

Coach Nick Klastava is the CEO and head coach of Running Explained and co-host of The Running Explained Podcast. He is a USATF and RRCA certified coach with nearly three decades of running experience, a 2:30 marathon PR, and a Boston Marathon finish. He is a masters runner and dad of two based near Baltimore, Maryland.

Coach Amanda Katz is a coach with Running Explained and co-host of The Running Explained Podcast. She coaches runners through marathon and half marathon training with a strong focus on fueling, recovery, and rest as part of the plan, and she is a self described introvert who saves her social time for training runs. Find her at amandaskatz.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does marathon recovery take?

It varies by runner, but plan for at least one to two weeks with no running, then an easy and gradual return. Amanda typically prescribes 10 days to two weeks off, and Nick takes a minimum of seven days before running only when he feels like it. Feeling fully sharp in workouts can take much longer. After his marathon PR, it took Nick about eight weeks.

What should I eat right after a marathon?

Start with something easy within minutes of finishing, like chocolate milk and a banana, then get a real meal with carbohydrate and protein within about an hour. Keep eating consistently for the rest of the day and the next couple of days, even if your appetite is low. At big city races, plan this ahead by packing food in your gear check bag or giving a support person a cooler.

Does a bad night of sleep before a marathon ruin the race?

No. Sleep across the entire training block matters far more than the night before. If you have been sleeping well for months, one short night before the race is not ideal but you will mostly be fine. Many runners sleep poorly the night before because of early start times.

Should I do a shakeout run the day before a marathon?

It is optional. A common approach is about 20 to 30 minutes easy with a few strides no faster than marathon pace, done in the morning. Some runners prefer a walk or an easy bike instead. The goal is to loosen up and settle nerves, not to add fitness.

Are compression socks or calf sleeves better for travel?

Compression socks are the better choice for long flights or drives because they compress the whole lower leg including the foot. Calf sleeves leave the foot uncompressed, which is fine for running but less ideal for hours of sitting.

Is it normal to feel sad after a marathon?

Yes. Many runners feel flat, sad, or unsure about what comes next after a goal race, whether it went well or not. Give yourself time to process the result, stay connected to people and activities outside running, and avoid rushing to announce your next goal.