Balance

After Sunday's 13.1, I was eager to get back out there and make sure my legs remembered how to move faster. I'm still too immature as a runner to fully comprehend the science behind recovery. I read  about it in magazines and blogs, I know it's a 'thing'-but sticking to a structured routine is what keeps me sane. I have taken two complete rest days per week for the past two weeks and while my legs were sore from the half, I wanted to move.
On Mondays I usually do a tempo run with 2 to 3 recovery miles. I don't warm up, which is dumb, but I'm always eager to get it over with. I decided to just do 2 miles fast and one cool down. It went ok, but my legs felt weird when I was done. Like drunk angry ants were stumbling around in there. I took it easy the rest of the day, but headed to OCF (my gym) that evening for some weight training and what I told myself would be an arm+abs workout. Wrong. It ended up being a fun, fast paced, leg and abs workout. I used light weights, but guiltily went straight home to ice my singing muscles in the bathtub.
I took Tuesday off and resumed my regular training on Wednesday morning which is track or speed work and weights in the evening. I decided to use my neighborhood since I have all distances mapped out. The result was confusing. My legs wanted to go fast, but they hurt. I felt strong, but my breathing was labored and crazy. My legs felt like they were going to fall off at the end of every interval and I had no sense of pace. I was also on the worst PMS day in my cycle (sorry, male readers).

By the end, I felt like this:









Weights did not happen. I helped with the 4:30 CCD class which was doubled in size this week since we had Pre-K and Kindergarten. Mercifully, we watched Veggie Tales and colored. The only child who was a nuisance was mine. The older kids were sweet to him because he's cute, but I was horrified to notice that the frosting from the yogurt covered pretzels I gave him to munch on at the house was coating the entire back of his head. He looked like he had the world's worst case of head lice. I spent much of the class time trying to convince him that wearing his hood was cool.
My children screamed and fought the whole way home and into the house where I went straight to the fridge for a beer. My husband ushered them away from me because I'm sure I looked like I was about to snap.
I ended up making a really tasty dinner of pan fried chicken with rosemary, mashed potatoes, and sauteed kale which for once everyone loved,and my husband thanked me by cleaning the kitchen while I piled into bed with the boys to watch Christmas movies. After a solid 10, I woke up the next day feeling much better.

I know some athletes train in cycles or seasons and take one to two full weeks off of real working out per year. Since I have been active for about a year, and am pretty excited about growing and pushing my running fitness, this could not sound less alluring. I've come so far from my skinny fat days.

When my husband Mark and I first met I thought I was in shape. My fitness routine consisted of lifting just enough weight to maintain some semblance of muscle tone. I skipped breakfast if I was going to be wearing a bathing suit that day. I knew how to use good posture to my advantage. My farthest run was out of necessity one evening when my husband and I were swinging in a park with a lunchbox full of beer and the cops pulled up. Since we had the terrible luck of getting a ticket for drinking beer in a park the week before  at sculpture falls where even the dogs are drinking beer, we decided to make a run for it. About 800 meters in, literally running for my life, we had to bail into the woods because I couldn't go on. Lactic acid felt like death and not knowing how to deal, I quit. It was embarrassing, to say the least. He got poison ivy and I had red chigger bites all over me for the next week. We escaped, but in the most humiliating way.

Sculpture falls 2007, skinny fat and happy, drinking forbidden beers

I still think about that. I need to be able to outrun my enemies (I do not think cops are enemies). I hope they stay as benign as competitors in local foot races, but if not, I want to be prepared. Not resting will compromise that as much as not running will. I'm going to take that whole week off one day. Probably in the summer, which I am already afraid of again. Until then, I will go with the flow and listen to my body. The longer I run, the easier it is to be flexible. I know it doesn't go away just because you take the time to recover. But a good run can leave you in love with the world. And the good runs usually come when your body feels like thanking you....

Village Creek 2013, the summer of run, still drinking beer