The Shortest Run

As an intellectually engaged runner, I am aware of and frequently remind myself of four facts;

1. The recovery period is as important as the workout.
   
2. It is during rest that the body is able to build, repair and physically respond to the stress of the training in such a way that you become stronger and fitter
   
3. If you overtrain you are putting yourself at increased risk of fatigue, injury, a whole host of related health problems and at very best you’ll probably plateau and not get any faster/stronger/fitter anyway.
   
4. You are only really as good as the workout you recover from.

As an increasingly passionate and historically obstinate runner however, I fully act upon this knowledge pretty much only when it suits me. Juneathon has obviously swung the balance more towards the obsessive than the rational and the Longest Day Run certainly cemented that over the weekend.  Regardless of this tendency to ignore my own good advice however, I am firmly of the opinion that if you are going to be silly you should probably be silly sensibly. It is for this reason that this morning (I’d have liked to leave it until this evening but I am in work late again tonight) I skipped the 30-40 minute easy session on the training plan and instead did the (very slow) minimum mile required to maintain the runstreak before spending an hour granny-swimming in the pool. Thankfully, despite having completed a cheaty mini ultramarathon at the weekend (37.8 miles in 24 hours but there was an overnight stop! See more about Day 1 and Day 2 if you missed it) my legs didn’t feel like they wanted to drop off, collapse under me or ping their tendons like frayed cables. I didn’t particularly see a reason to try and get them to that stage though, so a mile was good for me.

I then treated myself by pre ordering a copy of The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances by The Oatmeal author and illustrator, Matthew Inman. Aside from his cartoons on some of other obsessions that I appear to share with him such as eating cake and exposing incorrect punctuation, he has produced these wonderful online comics about distance running that never fail to cheer me up and make me actually laugh out loud. 

I’ll have forgotten I even ordered it by the time it arrives in September so it’ll be a nice semi-surprise for the start of the new academic year!

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Who isn't?

I LOVE IT when that happens!

So that’s it for today; a reflection on why rest is important and one little mile.

I’m also going to play the rest of the week’s training by ear; I have my first ever trail race on Saturday, only 10k but I’ve never done proper trail running before and I’ve been looking forward to it since the beginning of the year so I want to be fit and strong to enjoy it. If this week isn’t going to be a full taper, it’s certainly going to be a consolidation week. 


I’d like to do a track session with the Salford Harriers tomorrow but I’ll be deciding on that tomorrow lunch time based on energy levels and current ‘niggle count’. If I do go, the advantage of having done my mini run and swim this morning is that El Boddo will have had over 24 hours recovery time; even the Garmin won’t be arguing with that!