Monday, June 9, 2008

Refreshed

Whoo!! I ought to listen to my body more often. It's like a naggy girlfriend. It knows what it wants, and it wanted it last week. Well, when I finally granted it the 2 day rest that I promised it last monday, it granted me a better run than I've had in weeks. I have to admit that sometimes your body really does know best. And this is just another lesson learned for me. I really need to figure out where that exhaustion line is, so that I can learn the balance between overtraining to exhaustion and pushing myself in a good way.

Honestly, I was a bit apprehensive when I started yesterday's run. After my string of bad runs and not being able to shake the stress-related problems from my head, I thought I had perhaps dropped behind a couple of months. But, I forgot about the fundamental benefit of running. After a 5 minute jog to warm up, everything started to melt away and I began to refocus. And even if my temporary problems were still plaguing my thoughts, I used it to feed energy to my next set of sprints. Emotionally driven runs are just as good as focused runs. Yes, you haven't necessarily solved any of your problems at the end of it, but at least you feel more centered.

I'm also happy to say that even though it wasn't an especially long run, I still had enough energy to have done 2 more miles at the end of it. That's a sure fire sign that my batteries have been recharged and I'll be doing harder runs in a couple of days again. So Naggy GF body, you win this time. But soon enough it will be my turn to win an argument, because you can't always be right.

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