Downtime

This week I’m taking the first week off in probably over a year. I’ve definitely had lighter weeks, but doubt that I have gone more than three days without some form of exercise in that time.

Things have sort of come to a head for me in the last two months training wise. Since I was recovering from an injury and decided to focus on power lifting and biking in the interim, I figured this would be a relatively low period. But I soon felt compelled to spend as much time biking as I had been running, and once I healed to a point I moved back to running anyway. Then I made some commitments to my wife to go for walks in the mornings a couple of days a week. And Dr. Ho, my sports rehab doctor, started me on high-intensity work in conjunction with my treatment. Between the power lifting, the running, the walking, and the rehab work, I’m doing eleven or twelve workouts a week! My body needs a break.

Most articles I’ve read about long-term training recommend rest weeks and even rest months to give ones body time to recover and avoid the effects of overtraining, and it all seems quite sensible. But I’ve found it’s surprisingly difficult to convince yourself to do this.

For one thing I’ve grown accustomed to thinking about my next workout or next couple of workouts, always somewhere in the back of my mind, wondering if I’m going to feel light and strong or heavy and slow, making sure I’m eating and resting so as to be prepared. I think about the last time I’d done that workout and what was hard about it, or think about the area where it might take me if it’s a new running route or trail. It’s strange not having that next workout in mind.

The hardest thing is the nagging thought that if I miss a workout I’m going to incrementally lose some fitness. And missing a whole week is a lot of incremental losses. This is a pretty common feeling… I suspect it’s responsible for the day-to-day motivation for many runners. I guess I just have to have faith that whatever I lose I will gain back and more if I give myself time to rest.

The most annoying thing is probably going to be trying to not eat too much. I still follow the paleo diet, although my caloric intake has ballooned over the past few months to support muscle growth in conjunction with power lifting. I’ve been eating a large breakfast, two full lunches, and two full dinners every day. I’ve gained about 6-8 pounds of muscle, but have gotten used to this huge appetite. A week isn’t very long, but if I gain an extra 3 pounds of fat this week before I start training again, that’s an extra 3 pounds of dead weight I have to carry up the mountains, and if I keep consuming all of these calories without burning them off that’s exactly what will happen. It doesn’t help that this is the holiday season, though most of the usual culprits are off the paleo list anyway.

But it’s important to break habits if for no other reason than your body has to adapt to the change (which I generally view as a healthy thing). I recognize that the exercise is a bit of an addiction, as is the supporting lifestyle. I hope that a week off will give me a new take on things, get me fired up about upcoming races.

Speaking of which, I’m almost certainly going to do the Woodside 50K in February (the spring version of the race that I just volunteered for, it’s a twice-annual event). After that I have no plans, though maybe after this week off I’ll put together my general strategy for next year.