You know how some runs leave you feeling run ragged and whiny but others can leave grinning maniacally as you run up the street scaring people? Yeah I had one of those.
My blog is called Slacker Runner for a reason. In fact it was almost called Part Time Runner. I know I don’t run as often or as many miles as other people. I love rest days, they just speak to me. But what I don’t say is that as much as they speak words of comfort to me, those words also come with guilt. I feel guilty every time I don’t run and it stresses me out. The cycle continues on and on and on.
So when Coach Jenny told me to take 2 days off early this week, a part of me freaked out. Monday and Tuesday as mental health days?!?! Life and work has been stressing me out and I feel like I haven’t slept properly in weeks. Sunday night saw maybe 3 hours of sleep, maybe. Had she not told me not to run, I would have tried to run after work on Monday. That probably would have been a horrible idea. So instead I followed directions and rested. A tiny amount of yoga on Monday and nothing on Tuesday. Turns out having a coach tell me to take the rest days took away most of the guilt. Who knew?!
When it came time to run on Wednesday I was nervous. I am not sure why, it’s not like I could have forgotten how. A 45 minute easy run was on the schedule so I ran in work town to enjoy as much daylight as possible.
Holy crap, people. It was awesome. That’s not to say it was easy because I know damn well I ran parts of it too fast. I ran without music and enjoyed the views. The weather seemed perfect for a run and I think I would have kept running if I hadn’t run out of daylight. Well, I also didn’t have water. People! I only took 3 walk breaks!!!! That is unreal for me these days. Post marathon, walk breaks have been my friend and my crutch. And the first walk break was only because I can’t run up the hill in the eucalyptus grove without face planting. However, I was so excited on Wednesday that I tried it. The slick ground put a pin in that real quick. 😛 The second one was due to a phone call that I couldn’t ignore. The third was because damn that hill is long.
Seriously, it was awesome. It was a run I needed mentally as I have 2 races looming on the horizon. I’m normally cussing running up that last hill instead I was smiling ear to ear. 😀😀
Have you had an ear to ear run?
How are you with rest days?
Happy Friday!!!!
