micke-midlife on August 16th, 2010

micke_in_cold_waterThis morning, just arrived @ work after a 8,5km morning stroll (to get yesterday’s 21k in 4:15min/km out of the legs). Bumped into a colleague and fellow marathon runner, Christoffer, in the changing room… ehm, this sounded weird now. Anyway, nothing inappropriate intended here. Christoffer himself is going for the Marathon in Brussels later in October. Lucky chap, he has still 10 weeks to go, whereas we’re getting gradually nervous, it’s 6 weeks to Berlin only and the weekly mileage and intensity is not at all where it should be. Well praying always helps, right?

Christoffer had also some additional ideas especially to get rid of hurting legs after a long run or a tough session such as the intervals that are on schedule for this afternoon. An ice cold bath. Depending on the container, more or less of the legs will be covered with this ice cold water. Saw some elite runners doing that on TV once and they used a bath tub. I’ll probably try the black plastic tub that we used to prepare the mortar in just a couple of weeks back when remodeling our new home.

I guess the idea is that the muscles that suffer from micro-injuries when training hard get rid of consequential inflammation that otherwise would result in muscle pain the day(s) thereafter. Further the skin closes its pores and keep the heat inside thus increasing the blood circulation and all rubbish/exhaust products from the workout gets transported away a bit faster. So as Christoffer suggested keeping those legs 5 mins in this cold water bath should do the trick.

With temperatures of 25 degrees Celsius and beyond right now, I’m definitely going to try this out and in the end I’m gonna pour this whole vat of water over me, a rather refreshing shower to look forward to. Plus perhaps an ice cold beer there after as well :-)

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