Sleep and Recovery

So I read an article a few months ago about recovery after a marathon. The central point was that for every mile, you need a day of recovery. I scoffed at that. 26 days to recover? How could that be? Well while I am still not sure about that today is 11 days post marathon and I feel pretty good.  I have noticed one thing that is quite interesting.

I track all sorts of bio-data with a Basis watch, so I know my resting heart rate, sleep time, type and quality as well as body temperature. My sleep which has averaged about 380 to 400 minutes a night in the 17 week intensive phase of training (about normal for me) jumped to 420-430 minutes during the taper as I focused on extra sleep, and getting up later.

So now post marathon I have been letting sleep do what it will. The last 11 days have all averaged over 450 minutes, with significant chunks of time spent in what Basis calls "deep sleep" where you body refreshes and renews muscles and boosts your immune system. I have averaged about 20% of my sleep time in this phase in the past. In the last 11 nights, I have been over 30% consistently. By the way 15-30% of your total sleep time is considered normal.

So one can infer that I am still recovering, even though my morning waking up heart rate has returned to its normal pre-marathon range days ago and I feel zero residual soreness (that was gone within 4 days) my inner workings are still repairing themselves.