Saturday, December 1, 2012

Scheduled Rest Day

Yes. In addition to travel days, I also have scheduled rest days. Why? Because rest days are necessary. Right?

When I was seriously training trying to become a less fat guy, I fell into the trap that most of us recreational runners do. We look at a training plan as a goal. Not as a plan. What do I mean? I can't tell you how many blogs I have read where someone invariably says "I got really busy on Wednesday, so I'm going to swap my Friday rest day for my Wednesday." What they don't tell us is that Saturday is LSD day (Let's get our minds out of the gutter. *Those* LSD days were back in college.). They might as well be saying "I'm writing off the benefits of my LSD run this week."

My point is that a plan is put together with purpose. If we have an LSD run on a Saturday, sneaking in four miles on Friday will mean that your body is *not* in a fully rested and recovered state for Saturday when we are going to extend our aerobic engine! Not to mention, the four miles on Wednesdaynwas really designed as a recovery run anyways, so an extra rest day is actually not defeating the purpose of the recovery run.

It took me a long time and a lot of hours with guys who are a lot more athletic than me to understand the importance of rest and recovery. This time I'm sticking to the plan. Remember, spilled milk can't be put back in the bottle. At least not with a little dirt from the floor.

Calorie budget:

  • Goal: 1780 calories
  • Food: 2012
  • Exercise: 0
  • Too few/(too many): (232)
 

1 comment:

  1. Love, love, LOVE this post. It's a simple concept, but one that I am still working on grasping, and you just put it so well - I've been thinking about it all weekend ever since reading this.

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