Back-to-back Sporting Life champ Brittany Moran shares insight on how to bounce back

Toronto’s Brittany Moran won her second consecutive Sporting Life 10K on Sunday running 33:57 (3:23/K) on the fast, downhill course that runs down Toronto’s iconic Yonge Street. We caught up with Moran following her victory to chat about how she plans to recovery and resume training.

RELATED: Sporting Life 10K champ shares two workouts that delivered her a huge PB

Canadian Running: Congrats on a great race! How did it feel? Were you happy with how you executed?

Brittany Moran: Having come off an injury last fall/winter and having only resumed running workouts in March, I originally thought I’d be running Sporting Life for fun. I really wasn’t thinking about winning it. In the end, I was very happy with the execution of my race. I felt I ran brave and really trusted my training. I also have to give a shout-out to one of my Megan Brown Performance teammates Chris Van de Water whom I followed the whole race and which really helped keep me focused.

It was also tough to go in knowing what a great race I ran last year and that there could be an expectation of having to repeat it. But because I’ve had a completely different build-up to this race, I really tried to keep expectations in check. Fortunately, being only 10 seconds off last year’s time, meant that I surpassed all expectations. I’ve learned it’s important to treat every race as a separate occurrence and not dwell on past results. 

CR: How will you approach your recovery in the next days and weeks? What recovery tips would you share with others?

BM: Recovery is so important especially if you just ran your goal race or finished your season. My best advice is to take some down time and enjoy the break from training. We runners tend to get greedy near the end of a season when we are at our fittest. The temptation is to keep pushing and setting new goals, but unfortunately, that’s also when we’re most likely to overdo it and push too hard. Some specific things I’ve found that really help me feel better the day after a race are a good cool down immediately after the race and then some active stretching a few hours later to help flush out the legs. Going for a walk later in the day and/or the next day can also be really beneficial to recovery.

CR: How do you go about transitioning back to hard training? 

BM: After any race, I always take a few days that are just easy and comfortable running to help me recover. In this case, after a 10K, I hope that by Thursday I’m able to do a longer run and will add another quality run on the weekend. Of course longer races require much more recovery time. My goal race of the spring season is in less than two weeks, so there’s still a little bit of work that needs to be done before I toe the line again.

CR:  What are you training for in the next few weeks and months?

BM: Next up is the Ottawa Half-Marathon on May 28th, which I’m really excited for. The goal in Ottawa will be to run a smart race that will hopefully lead to a personal best. I’ll definitely take some time off, likely a few weeks of mostly easy running, after Ottawa and begin to refocus on the next major goal which is to run a marathon in the fall and hopefully come away with a new PB in that distance as well.