Wow- you both are way more intense than I am!
I did 3 races before my IM (a sprint, oly and half). They weren't at full intensity, just a prep for the big event (and since my IM was in my first season of tris I just needed to get some practice under my belt).
Six months out from my IM and I still don't feel like I'm where I was before. It's taken a long time to recover (although looking back I don't think I did enough good recovery after the race as the "I just did an IM" laziness set in for a couple months after).
For the pros I don't think recovery takes quite as long, but for me it's taken a lot longer than I thought it would. I'm thinking about doing my first post IM sprint tri a "short" (ha!!) 9 months after my IM. We'll see....