Skip to main content

One Week

[Insert Bare Naked Ladies here]

It's been one week /
Since I ran one day...
Yeah I haven't run in a week. But before chalking that up to pure laziness, hear me out.

Before this week, I hadn't really shut off mentally since November. Even the week I didn't run after the Pig was spent doing rehab stuff...I was anxious to get back to training, and I never really turned off mentally.

I needed a break. My desire to actually train was virtually nothing. It was weird how it kind of happened all of a sudden...like, one afternoon I just decided to mentally check out.

And you know what? It felt awesome. Not running has been great. I've had so much more time and energy during the day. I needed some time to check out mentally.

But I think it's about time to get back into it. I don't think I'll have lost much fitness with just one week off. Let's just say, the mental benefits of recharging the batteries (so to speak) far outweigh the physical negative of lost fitness. Getting back a renewed enthusiasm for training is what it's all about.

As I've gotten out of college, I've started to realize that it's not necessarily a bad thing to take a break occasionally. Hell, Roger Bannister took long breaks very frequently...he often took hitchhiking trips around France and Europe to get away from running (back in the days when hitchhiking was romantic and not illegal). Not that I'm comparing myself to Roger Bannister (although...he did run his first sub-4 mile on my birth date. What up.), but it shows that even the best take time off. It's good to get that mental edge back, which very easily gets worn down from endless days of that same thing.

And without that mental enthusiasm to want to train, there's no point in actually training.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Base Training the Lydiard Way

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while, but just haven't really gotten around to it. This is for anyone using the summer to gear up for a fall season of racing, whether that's a marathon, road races, or cross country. That said, this is especially for you high school and college athletes. Summer is the most important time of the season. It's when you build your base -- everything that's to come later in the fall is determined by the quality of this base. In fact, some might even say that your end-of-season peak is limited by how well you trained over the summer. Arthur Lydiard believed this. And his philosophies still form the foundation of modern-day distance training. You've probably heard (and maybe internalized) many of the common critiques of Lydiard-style training: it's old and outdated , or it's too hard, or, most common, it's just a lot of long slow distance. And low slow distance makes for long slow runners . The lat...
2 comments
Read more

Why I Love Running At Withrow

One of my favorite places to do workouts and strides and general fast stuff is the track at Withrow High School in Hyde Park. No, it's not because of the newly renovated surface. No, it's not because it's a perfect 10-minute warmup and cooldown jog from my house. No, it's not because I'm a nerd and it has markings for both a 1600 and a mile. No, it's not because the school building forms a perfect "L" around the homestretch and first turn, sheltering the field from any drastic wind. No, it's not because I spent four years during college running workouts there. Actually, wait, that is part of it. The reason I love Withrow's track so much can be summed up like this: it's a true public track. If you've ever been to the track, then you know how packed it can get with people using it. And it's not just Withrow High School teams and random individuals -- the track is also regularly used by many other local high schools witho...
1 comment
Read more

Indy Monumental HM Race Recap; Or, I'm Going to the Trials!

Hey blogosphere, sorry for the month-long hiatus. I got a little-stitious in the lead up to Indy Monumental and was worried that I was doing a little too much talking (well, writing) and not enough training. This is the race report I posted on reddit recapping the race, so I thought I'd re-post it here as well. Hey reddit! I'm mostly a lurker here, but I raced Saturday morning in Indianapolis and wanted to share. The TL;DR: I ran 1:04:33 for the half marathon, which qualifies me for the US Olympic Marathon Trials in LA this February. I also got 3rd overall, which was pretty cool, too. So anyway, here goes... But first, a shout-out to the staff at Monumental Those guys know how to put on a top-notch race. It's so refreshing to here the rhetoric coming out of the organization that says, "we're trying to be a professional event; we understand that most people want a fun event, but we also understand that some people want to come and  race  the damn thing; we...
3 comments
Read more