![\"Sept1-3\"](\"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Sept1-3.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIt’s not news to me, but I always fear taking a break, even for a week, because my head does crazy things.\u00a0 Not like other athletes who complain about the lack of activity, I don’t mind that, I know my body likes the rest after a hard effort.\u00a0 It’s about the coming back.\u00a0 I’m always afraid that somehow I’m going to return to sport and I’ll have lost the joy or taste or the aptitude I had previously for it.\u00a0 Like this whole triathlete thing was a fluke.<\/p>\n
Newton’s First Law states that “”An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”\u00a0 This is so my life.\u00a0 If you set me on a course, and it’s not intolerable or offensive to me, I’ll just keep doing whatever the fuck I was doing until something disrupts me.\u00a0 I actually lost a TON (ok, 1\/20th of a ton) of weight just relying on inertia once I found something that worked.\u00a0 It wasn’t the healthiest, holistic way of losing weight and relied on counting calories and 100 calorie snack packs and fat free cheese (shudder), but it led me to where I am today, so that’s a good thing in the grand scheme.<\/p>\n
I tend to fear rest simply because of the oomph needed to get inertia going again.\u00a0 That’s why I’ll never go into off season without a goal race planned and a projected time to exit.\u00a0 I fear it would be too easy to forget I love to race and remember I love wine and my couch too much.<\/p>\n
Usually one week isn’t all that much, but I had the combined and completely irrational fear of “what if I’ve lost all my fitness” and “what if I haven’t taken enough time off to mentally be ready to handle training again” (one or the other might make sense, but not both at once!).\u00a0 I’m pretty sure you don’t lose any measurable fitness in one week, and I’m pretty sure 8 weeks of training isn’t anywhere close to my burnout point, so, yeah.\u00a0 Brain woogies.<\/p>\n
I had a… let’s just say… annoying-ish Monday, and my husband was stuck late at work so I was solo and I had other stuff to do and I was tired and didn’t feel like it and cranky.\u00a0 However, since this isn’t my first rodeo, I knew that was EXACTLY WHY I needed to run, however short or slow it was.\u00a0 I also knew I was kinda bored of my usual route and needed to get groceries, so I drove to the grocery store, which happened to be a block from a nice two mile stretch where a lot of folks run and bike, so I set out there.<\/p>\n Half a mile in, I felt great.\u00a0 I finished the loop and kept dancing around my car because I didn’t want to stop.\u00a0 Nothing fast, just 4.5 miles easy, but I was happy.\u00a0 I half hoped my husband got home and decided he wanted to go for a night run, because I was up for 5 more miles no problem.<\/p>\n We knocked out 4.5 more miles in the morning on Tuesday, and 3 at lunch, and my week was looking up!\u00a0 I was getting the miles just as I could, and little snippets of runs instead of big ambitious miles made the recovery easier, right?<\/p>\n So then why, on Wednesday, did I wake up feeling like I got hit by a freight train?\u00a0 I still don’t have a great answer, but I was pretty much flattened – tired, no voice, sore throat, so I worked and slept.\u00a0 Zero training.\u00a0 Thursday, I woke up feeling exactly the same.\u00a0 Bleh.\u00a0 I felt a wee bit better by the end of the day (or maybe just not any worse as I expected to come down with something), so I gingerly got on the trainer and spun for 40 mins.<\/p>\n I felt pretty great after, and had ZERO change in symptoms on Friday morning except the daily allergy pills I had started on Wednesday just in case seemed to have kicked in because I felt less tragic overall, and decided at that point to get on with my life.<\/p>\n I ran 3.5 miles after work with Zliten and our headlamps.\u00a0 Mile 1 was sludgy (to be expected).\u00a0 Mile 2 felt great (though I stayed at my snail pace anyway).\u00a0 Around mile 3, I started feeling a bit weak and kept slowing so I jogged it in and called it.\u00a0 Probably one of the worst feeling runs in a while.\u00a0 I was not encouraged by this.<\/p>\n Saturday morning, I woke up feeling ok, and it was 65 and rainy outside, so I HAD to get out there to play in the puddles.\u00a0 My run plan was only to run until I felt worse than when I started (which is pretty much never on normal runs), or til 10:30, whichever came first.\u00a0 While I kept it snail’s pace again, after mile 3 or so, the normal magic happened and I found myself speeding up just a bit at the end and extending the run to 6 miles, even though it was a little past my projected quitting time.<\/p>\n I hit the trainer for 45 mins while the Kona Ironman Champs kicked off.\u00a0 There may have also been champagne toasts and chips and dip eaten, so you can tell how SERIOUS that cycling work was, right?\u00a0 It was a little less rewarding to watch Kona than last year when we rocked an 18 mile run first, but two hours of activity was just about right, I felt good that day but really tired by the end of it and slept great (and 10+ hours) that night.<\/p>\n Sunday, I had considered a little more activity since I felt much better, but it’s my normal rest day, so I observed it.\u00a0 We did laundry, batch cooked, picked up a bit, and binge watched Family Guy in between it all because it was brainless and it was exactly the day I needed.<\/p>\n And now, I arrive at today.\u00a0 I wouldn’t say I’m 100%, but I’m definitely in the 90s and plan to resume the run all the (easy) miles plan this week.\u00a0 While I’m not happy I was knocked down a bit last week, I can’t have picked a better week for it to have happened.<\/p>\n Week 1 (10\/6-10\/12):<\/p>\n Week 2’s plan is a little more.\u00a0 Physically I’ve got the allergy issue I’m dealing with, but mentally I feel a little more ready than last week to rock, so maybe taking things a little easier last week wasn’t so bad of an idea.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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