Hey there! Okay, so sorry for being a bit lame as of late. Totally was MIA here on the blog yesterday (well, I guess technically my Friday late night post ended in the wee hours of Saturday morning) and then things were kind of touch and go towards the end of last week.
I was just feeling pretty tired and run down and things came to a nice crashing halt yesterday. So what has my exciting, living it up twenty-something lifestyle kept be busy doing the past two days? A whole lotta nothing exciting…namely sleeping. I can usually get a good sense of how I’m doing/feeling by my workouts and on Saturday I had wanted to do a harder workout and get in more miles than ended up happening.
But it was one of those times when the first five minutes feel like a sucker punch to the face, the first mile passes and you just tell yourself you’ll get into the ‘groove’ and feel better as you keep going. That does happen a lot, I mean I do always tell people the hardest part of working out is usually getting going and the first few steps. That five minute benchmark is a funny one, before that you can feel like death but then 5:01 ticks by and you say, ‘Hey this isn’t so bad.’
But after three miles rolled by and that would usually be the end of my warm-up I knew there wasn’t going to be a tempo effort in me for the day. I finished somewhere over 8 miles, did some arm weights, lunges, and called it a day. I just felt zapped and tired and hoped that a little extra rest day would leave me feeling fresher by the morning. I slothed around and made good friends with my pillow. If competitive sleeping were a real sport, then sign me up! So basically foodage and nappage. I know how to do my Saturdays up in full party fashion, right? Sad when I’m about as wild as the geriatric ward.
Well, today I’m still feeling in my little tired funk…but not as bad. It doesn’t really make total make sense, I was hoping I’d feel better and maybe that tempo would happen. I’m not gonna lie, I still feel guilty ‘skipping’ a hard workout even though I’m not actually training for a race. It’s still hard for me to cut myself a break and not feel like I’m just a complaining slacker. But being that those ‘easy’ 8 miles felt way harder than they should have I tried to tell myself that my legs felt like lead bricks and forcing a workout wasn’t smart, being that I knew it would have ended pretty ugly.
So I’m hoping that the old bod just needed some extra R and R and should be back to full strength soon. I don’t know if I’m a little sick or something. I put in my 8 miles and change, then some core and abs. And just laying low for the rest of the night.
Funny as it sounds, as long as I’m able to still get my run in I feel partially okay with just being a slug for the rest of the day. I figure I earned my right to be lazy. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be out and doing something fun with my friends or family but this weekend was going to be low-key whether I liked it or not. That’s okay, there were plenty of other blogs I could read where people were doing much more thrilling endeavors so I can vicariously live through them. There was also plenty of action to read about happening on the track at USA Nat’s. And if I watched a bunch of awesome athletes busting their @$$es, that’s gotta count for some kind of extra workout. I sweat just as much as I raised fork to lips as they did on the bell lap, right? Sure, Cait, whatever your irrational mind wants to fool you into thinking.
Well, all this tying is just a bit too much exertion for me, so I’ll be off. Sorry this is both a boring post and somewhat one with me just complaining. Something I really don’t like to do all that much of. I know there are days or stretches that we feel run down, and a few days ago the topic of denying that you’re sick was raised at Shut Up and Run. I think lots of us do that, or we don’t like to admit we’re tired; sometimes I think we do it to fool no one other than ourselves. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that niggling ‘guilt’ if we don’t do a workout the way we had planned it to be and opt for an easy run instead. Or even take a rest day completely. In our sport we are constantly navigating the fine line between doing enough but not too much. Recognizing ‘normal’ pain of exertion versus the different pain of a potential injury. Being smart enough to back off when you should but being gritty enough to not back off and push to the finish if you’re just feeling the muscle burn of a hard race or workout.
So admitting to ourselves that we are sick or overly tired makes us feel lazy or like a complainer. But really it shouldn’t, I think that’s why having a coach or an outside person can help. They can be the one who ‘gives you permission’ to cut yourself some slack if it’s obvious you need it. It doesn’t make you a weak person and in the long run it’s for the better. So I’m hoping my few low-key days will leave me feeling a little fresher in the upcoming week and I’ll be able to get that dang tempo done so I won’t have it weighing on my conscious. And I mean I did still put in some miles. 🙂
1) What did you do this weekend? I’m sure even those at the Sun River Retirement Community must have outdone me this time. 🙂
2) Do you know the ‘guilt’ I’m talking about?
3) Did you have a race this weekend? Time to bust out the bragging…let’s hear it and don’t be shy!