At least someone can sleep...

I can never sleep the night after a marathon. It might be the adrenaline, it might be the caffeine gels - but I actually think its exhaustion. Do you ever feel too exhausted to sleep? It's like that.

Except on top of that, everything hurts. Your muscles start to ache and they feel heavy. You can practically feel the lactic acid weighing them down. When you do get to sleep, it doesn't last long. When you wake the DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) has set in and you're starving (because you burnt so many calories and you couldn't eat much afterwards). You have to get some food, but it hurts to walk to the kitchen.

It's virtually impossible to get back to sleep afterwards. Wesley practically jumped in my spot. It's nice to see someone can sleep!

You think about taking ibuprofen to take down the inflammation. But here's the thing, taking away the inflammation doesn't allow your muscles to heal properly. When you do extreme exercise, you basically tear your muscles, they then rebuild stronger. Take away the inflammation and they don't rebuild properly. In short, you don't get stronger.

So you put up with the pain. And you know what? It does get less each time. After 4 marathons now, I'm definitely experiencing less pain. Don't get me wrong, it's still bad, but less bad. But it's well worth it - no amount of pain can diminish what I felt yesterday - pure contentment, happiness and achievement.

A quick trip to Sarah this afternoon for a recovery massage, and now I'm relaxing on the sofa with a film, the cat and a onesie. I'll sleep better tonight.