It's the evening of race day. How did it go?
Congratulations if you finished, particularly if you got the time you wanted. Hopefully, you will have enjoyed the experience.
You have put a lot of effort into training for Ealing Half Marathon and so the question is now what happens next?
If you are an experienced runner, perhaps with more than one race in your calendar, you've already worked out your plan and know what to do
If you run half marathons infrequently, then here are a few tips
be ready to have a few days (1-3 days) of normal living, no running, as your passive recovery
if you want to use the time you would normally be running to do something running-related, have a think about how your training went and if there's anything you would change for next time
you might also want to think about your next race to give yourself another target - but remember to allow yourself sufficent recovery time before you start another training plan
after your passive recovery, it's worth having a phase of "active" recovery in which you do exercise but less than you would do in a normal training schedule - the reason for this is to encourage your body to heal after the race - this phase might last about seven to 10 days, giving you a total recovery period of eight to 13 days (one rule of thumb is that the number of days for which you shouldn't do serious training after a race is the number of miles in the race)
Listen to your body to determine when you have recovered and are ready to start serious training again.
if you have enjoyed increasing your mileage, you might want to consider a regular training routine in which you maintain your mileage at a higher level