Forty-two kilometres and however many months of Sundays it took to get there. Congratulations.

Now the part nobody puts in the training plan. The next month will do more to decide how the rest of your running year goes than the race itself did — and it’s the bit runners most often get wrong.

Your legs feel better before they are better
Soreness, or lack thereof, does not equate to recovery post-marathon. Soreness peaks in the first day or two and is largely gone inside a week. This does not mean you are fully recovered after a week. Full recovery from a marathon can take up to a month.
So “I feel fine” arrives considerably before being recovered. That gap is where people go and do something regrettable. Usually a parkrun.

The first fortnight
Don’t run for a week — low-impact cross-training if you’re restless, but nothing with impact. In week two, three short easy runs with a day between each. Build from there, and most people are running comfortably again by week four.
The weeks after a marathon are when you’re most likely to pick up an injury, so return to running, particularly hard running, needs to be carefully reintegrated into your program.

Bone: why injuries turn up weeks later
When bone adapts to a big increase in load (a marathon), it resorbs before it rebuilds — and resorption takes roughly two weeks while formation takes months. That leaves a window, a few weeks after the load went up, where bone is temporarily weaker than it was. It’s the best explanation we have for why bone stress injuries so often appear after a marathon rather than during it.

Give back to your body
The post-marathon high will tell you to move straight onto the next goal, and it’s a voice that’s VERY hard to ignore. That’s why the ballot for next year’s marathon is always released in the weeks after this year’s race. And while it’s good to start thinking about what’s next, you MUST give back to your body first.

There’s a common version of the next few weeks: wait until you feel normal, then pick the next goal up from exactly where you left this one. It’s understandable. It’s also how people end up injured in a build they haven’t started yet.

The better version treats this month as something you give back to yourself, rather than time and fitness lost. Strength work is usually the first thing to fall out of a marathon plan and the last thing to come back, and the gap it leaves is where a lot of injuries live.

So, rest first, and rest properly, then use the coming weeks to rebuild a foundation of strength to carry you through the next block. This is the most important thing you can do to reduce your injury risk and get you humming for that next PB. Lighter and controlled first, heavier and slower after a fortnight, anything springy or plyometric last. Keep the running easy while the strength work is the priority.

This is the part of the year you can build what a marathon block won’t, with nothing on the calendar forcing your hand, and no constant soreness from a heavy running block. A meta-analysis of more than 25,000 athletes found strength training cut overall injury rates to around a third and almost halved overuse injuries. More than stretching. More than any shoe.And again — congratulations. However it went on the day, the work that got you to the start line is already done and already yours, and the fitness isn’t going anywhere in a month. The only way to lose it now is to go looking for it again too early.

So rest. Properly, and without feeling like you’re wasting anything. That’s not the end of this block — it’s the start of the next one.