Rest Day = Best Day

Miles Run This Week: 3
Days Until Burlington: 102

New layout! Twitters! Links! Races! Other blogs I dig! Teknologeeez!

Before the blogeekout, Monday I had what should have been an easy 3-mile run. I strength trained beforehand, which will make my awkward arm jiggle eventually go away, but is particularly exhausting ( Dom focuses on keeping our heart rate up). Since I calculated out what my pace should be (to compensate for the 0.16 discrepancy on my MapMyRun app), I can't just cruise at whatever speed and figure that's enough. About 1.75 miles in, hitting that 10:58 pace was hard. And this was in base building mode.

My hope is that running these at a slow pace tired will lead to stronger runs in the future (good); but it could actually lead to me hurting myself (not good). So I am proceeding with extreme caution.

Tuesday was my much needed (and earned) rest day. My off day can pretty much be summed up in two actions: sitting on the couch and eating EVERYTHING in sight. Yesterday was no exception. And it was delicious.

Usually when I go into human-vacuum mode, I start to panic. How am I going to burn all these off? Usually while I'm eating an entire sleeve of cookies, I can justify it with the "I'm going for a run tonight" (which is easily the only reason I run anymore...so I can eat), but I've realized that my body knows what's up. I've been training long enough now that it knows I get 1 day a week to go bananapants (and eat those) and I just pack it in.

Luckily, last night "packing it in" consisted of omega-3 rich salmon and nutrient-rich sweet potatoes, so that helped calm the guilt factor down. (The Reese's hearts, however, did not.)

One of the fringe benefits of getting up early to make the breakfast burrito is I now have an extra 5-ish minutes in my morning to foam roll. While I'm already in a deep, loving relationship with my foam roller, it's also kind of on a booty-call level: I typically only go to it when I need something. This 2-AM-approach only helps the surface knot, and is short term at best (if that). I've heard that you should foam roll daily - but who the hell has time for that? But in an effort to reduce the "owowowowow", I'm borderline proposing to my roller.
Also - the hotel for Burlington has been booked! Now I have to go!