Not exactly a recovery day!

Saturday, February 11, 2012 · Mike Davis

Friday, February 10, 2012

I took yesterday off to give my legs some much needed rest. Each week my objective is pretty much the same; run 7 miles Monday through Thursday, rest Friday and long run or some other quality run on Saturdays, finished up with rest day on Sunday. In general I’ve been sticking to that schedule, but forcing myself to stick to a plan at the cost of hurting the big picture (marathon), is not wise. So, I have a plan each week, however if my body tells me otherwise, I have to adjust and be smart. Having a day plus to rest some aches did me good and my plan was to only strength train today and rest my achy hips another day.

Part one of that plan worked out well. I got up, made a protein shake (the blender woke my bride), and headed to my gym/basement. I am truly very lucky, as my basement pretty much has everything a person requires to workout. I have a great set of free weights, a kettle bell, pull-up bar, weight bench, core ball and a TV. I usually turn on the 80s Much Music channel and push myself to stretch my limits! Today I didn’t spend my usual 15 minutes drinking coffee and getting ready, I feared if I hesitated I would not get down there. So I quickly made a protein smoothie and grabbed my water cup and went to it. Great workout, lots of core, some arms, chest and some legs stuff. What a great feeling when you push yourself to do things that make you work!

Later in the day I get a communicator message from my by Justin, asking if I wanted to run an easy 4 today? Definitely not in my plans and I didn’t even bring running clothes to work. Because I’m a pushover, I sent him back a message telling him we could leave from work, go to my house and run from there. He was good with that, so I wouldn’t be getting a complete second day of recovery. Ah four miles wouldn’t be so bad.

We got to my house and with the weather being so nice, I was glad to put on some shorts and enjoy it. We did a nice easy 4 miles through Dover and while my legs were still tight, my hips seemed fine. We were able to hold back our pace, so I still feel like it was a recovery day. We picked up the last 2 miles some so there was a little heavy breathing on my part. Justin seems to barely breathe, while I must sound like an out of breath cow. Nevertheless, we got in an easy 4 miles on a beautiful day.

Tomorrow is my last run with the group of people I’m training for the Hampton Half Marathon, we will run around 8 miles and I will try and add on 4 more to give me 12. We shall see! One of the next couple of blog post I will compare my last marathon training with my current at this point. Kind of interesting.

Be well!

mike