After the Winnipeg Marathon: Managing the Post-Race Dip

By Dr. Michael Minenna D.C., B.Sc., SFMA, FMS

You trained for months, you ran the Winnipeg Marathon, and now you're in the strange in-between: legs that feel like someone else's, a calendar with no long run on it, and the nagging urge to get back out there. The post-race period is where a lot of runners quietly undo their hard work — not by doing too little, but by doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Why you feel so off

A marathon is a significant physiological event. Beyond the obvious muscle soreness, you've stressed connective tissue, depleted energy stores, and taxed your immune and hormonal systems. Feeling flat, unmotivated, or oddly emotional in the days afterward is common and normal. Your body is asking for recovery, and recovery is part of training — not a break from it.

The soreness itself peaks a day or two out and fades over roughly a week. The deeper recovery — tendons, connective tissue, the systems that fuel performance — takes longer, often two to three weeks before you're truly ready to train hard again.

The rebound-injury trap

Here's the pattern we see every spring: a runner feels good about ten days after the race, jumps straight back into the volume they were doing during peak training, and pulls up two weeks later with an angry Achilles, a sore knee, or a stress reaction in the shin. The culprit is almost never the running itself. It's the spike — going from near-zero back to peak load before the tissues had caught up.

This is the training-load paradox in action. Injury risk climbs not from high training loads per se, but from rapid increases in load relative to what you've recently done.^1,2 The post-race window is the riskiest version of this, because your recent load just dropped to nothing and the temptation is to leap back to where you were.

There are no bad runs — only too much, too soon

The running isn't the enemy and rest isn't a punishment. The principle that guides a smart return is the same one that should have guided your build-up: there are no bad exercises, only too much too soon.¹ An easy three-kilometre jog is a fantastic idea on day five. The same distance at race pace is not.

A sensible return

For the first several days, prioritize sleep, food, and easy movement — walking, light cross-training, gentle mobility. Let the eagerness sit. When you do start running again, begin well below your previous volume and intensity, and rebuild gradually over two to three weeks rather than two to three days. A reverse-taper mindset works well: ease back in the way you eased off before the race.

Pay attention to the parts of the chain that took the most punishment. Calves, Achilles, hips, and the low back often need a little targeted strength work to handle the return. If something felt slightly off during training, the recovery window is the ideal time to address it before the next block — rather than running straight back into it.

When to get checked

If you've got pain that's sharpening rather than settling, a niggle that hung around through your whole build-up, or you simply want a plan to return without the rebound injury, an assessment is worth it. At Boreal Spine & Sport we look at the whole running chain — foot to hip to trunk — and build a return that respects the timeline your tissues are actually on. The medal's already yours; the goal now is to still be running in the fall.

References

1. Gabbett TJ. The training-injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? Br J Sports Med. 2016;50(5):273-280.
2. Nielsen RO, Buist I, Sorensen H, Lind M, Rasmussen S. Training errors and running related injuries: a systematic review. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2012;7(1):58-75.
3. Bertelsen ML, Hulme A, Petersen J, et al. A framework for the etiology of running-related injuries. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2017;27(11):1170-1180.