easing back
rest is a four letter word to most endurance athletes. over the years i’ve heard and seen many references to how necessary rest is in order to improve performance. more often than not about all i hear is the garbled instruction of the school teacher from “Peanuts” to which i nod my head and respond with a “yep” or an affirmative “uh-huh” to feign my acceptance of the concept. over the years my insistence on “pushing through” obvious signals of impending over training or overuse has prompted my dad to draft a yet unpublished book for “uncoachable runners.” he claims to have changed my name in his manuscript but i have yet to verify this as of yet.
during late august, i was noticing a few signs of overuse beginning to show up. my right shin and achilles were aching on a daily basis so i opted to ice them down one evening while sitting on the couch channel surfing. (my wife loves when i do that – – channel surfing not icing.) while i’m not doing much running (compared to others and even my own historical training levels) i have opted to take my (right) foot off the gas pedal for a little while to allow for some recovery. (notice how i didn’t say “rest”)
so far this month, i’ve run on only half of the days for 45-60 minutes each time i’m out. a little less than two weeks from now i’ll be running a trail half marathon in the nearby Kettle Moraine State Forest. i do wish i’d be taking this reduced workload a bit closer to the race but i guess i’d rather show up a bit under trained than a bit gimpy. regardless, both my shin and achilles are feeling better now and i’m not minding (too much) starting my morning constitutionals at 5:15AM or so now that the kids are back in school.
MTD – 23 miles (4 days)
YTD – 1,141 miles (179 days)
Odometer – 32,247 miles