Speeding up general recovery

[ChasingShadows]

Well, having been conned into entering a half marathon I need to be putting a bit more effort into my morning runs to get my speed up a bit (my main worry about the distance is boredom, so figure I need to get it over faster!) - so, this morning did my regular half hour but threw in some fartlek work (& when I say some, probably 10-15 minutes between warming up & getting a nose bleed, so really not much!), doing a few repeats of running hard until exhausted, returning to a steady run in between.
Have spent the entire day badly craving my duvet! Although I can feel the muscles have had a workout they're not the problem, I'm more head tired than body tired. What's going on & what can I do to manage it? Diet? Take the hard runs down to something equivalent to the running times for a couch to 5k? Stop whingeing, put up with it & hope my body adjusts in time? All suggestions gratefully received

 

[The Ramzev]

Bananas. I've found that they are the bestm recovery. bananas and chocolate milk.
I've found that when I get "head tired" it's normally because my sugar levels are down from not eating enough before running. If this is the case, dip your banana in chocolate (head out of the gutter!)
And have a good strong IPA.

 

[ChasingShadows]

Slight problem - I hate bananas with a passion! Actually, I can tolerate them in smoothies (so long as I don't have to make them!), which would also give the sugar hit, so shall make sure I have one in for my next run. My run's the first thing in my day, so eating first's not really an option (nor beer after!).

 

[rbondi]

I eat at least 20 bananas a week. A far cry from this.

 

[ChasingShadows]

Honestly, I hate them enough that I'm not even clicking on that link! When I worked at a commercial bakery the test kitchen would use me to test if competitors' products really contained banana. Think there must be something in mango that reacts to neutralise whatever the taste is that I can't tolerate. It's very odd, I had no problem with them as a child, wish that was still the case.