Forced Rest Days

Forced Rest Days

 

Rest days that are built into your training schedule are much needed and respected moments of recovery and reflection.

 

But Forced Rest Days, well, that's another case. You know your muscles are shot and cold use a break because yesterday they barely slugged it out with the run. Furthermore, you didn't sleep well which could just be your body screaming at you: Overtrain much! Throw in your siesta that just went on and on and left you feel headached and lethargic.

 

You come to the one thing you need to do, you know you have to do, but can't seem to pull the trigger on.

 

...take an unscripted day off...

 

You sit on the coach and star at the blazing sun crossing over your neighboring buildings. You can almost feel the crisp chill in the spring night coming. But you shake it off, you head throbs like an old lady jabbing you for attention with her umbrella.

 

You began the process of listing all the reasons that you shouldn't run, that taking this rest day is a GOOD thing for your training.

 

Mine begin something like this:

• You've done four long runs, each over 25k, for the last four weeks.

• You ran crappy on your fifth long run yesterday, even with hitting your target pace, and it was no fun struggling home.
• You skipped hill repeats and tempo runs last week to throw more kilometers on the barbie.
• You haven't been sleeping well for the last three weeks. (Not your fault and your dealing with the noise.)
• You've got a long view of things. You've got no race on the horizon.
• You're 42 and, let's be serious, you could do with a break once and a while from the endless running.

 

...the list goes on and on...

 

And STILL I need to go to trickery to get myself to forget about running.

 

It is, as of these words, 18.08 or 6pm, and the best way to force myself to not run is to go down to the local cafe and have a coke and some of their homemade pasta and cheese. With a bellyful of food and drink, and some diverting wifi, I will be stuck there for an hour or two and by then I will too "crippled" to go run. Having eaten and diverted myself with Internet news, I will happily walk up to my apartment, and sleep. Sleep to run another day.

 

And so here I am, coke in hand, thinking about tomorrow. As recovery days go today is not so bad. Tomorrow, as a hard day, will benefit from today's forced inactivity. Tonight I will gorge on pasta and mushroom meat sauce, and Game of Thrones and read Deadline. Recharging can be difficult but also pleasing, it's all in the planning.

 

Here's hoping your run is fun and inspiring. It seems my rest has been both.

 

Ciao from Madrid!