Give It a Rest

Grab your beverage of choice and let’s have a little chat on this rainy, gloomy Boston morning shall we?  So, lately I’ve noticed with a couple of the running blogs I follow that they are facing injuries that are sidelining them for running.  Another thing I have noticed is that these same runners were just coming off of marathons or bigger races and took little to no rest in between their last training/race and their next training/race cycle.  When reading about their injuries, I found myself shaking my head saying to myself, “Of course you are injured, your body needs to recover.”  It made complete sense to me why their injuries were occurring, our bodies NEED rest.  Training for anything, especially marathons or longer distances can be very taxing on our bodies, even for those in tip-top shape.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I get that you don’t want to put in all that hard work for months, run a race and then sit around doing nothing and lose all the fitness you worked so hard to gain, and that is not what I’d advocate for anyways.  BUT…only taking a few days off of running and then piling the miles back on, even if you feel perfectly okay, just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me and feels like a recipe for disaster injury (these are of course, all just my personal opinions, I don’t know what other people’s motivations, goals, etc are).  I am by no means a doctor and of course, everyone’s body responds differently to training, mileage, etc, but as I was reading Running Times online, I came across this article and it validated my thoughts and made a lot of sense to me. (This is just a snapshot of the full article, I recommend you read the whole thing!)

Now, this is just MY experience, but after both of my full marathons, I took a break from running and focused on a lot of cross training.  After my first marathon I took to the Insanity program and was more fit and ripped after that training cycle than I had ever been while running.  As many of you know, post Boston this year I started the T25 program.  I took a few weeks totally off from running (I was still cross training), even though I physically felt fine and have just as of late been sprinkling in more weekly runs, and guess what?  Not only am I feeling re-energized with running but I am getting FASTER?!?  I think the rest from a lot of running coupled with more intense cross training has left me mentally and physically stronger while letting my body recover from pounding out the miles during my last training cycle.  

I started thinking about this more on my drive home the other night.  Now this is just my assumption/observation, but while I love social media and blogging, I think that it’s possible that people (and the bloggers I have been reading that are in this situation) may be falling into the idea (or pressure) that if they aren’t constantly training for something and talking about it, then they are somehow less of an athlete or will have nothing else to talk about since they hear of others who are doing back to back marathons, ultras, etc.  It’s that whole comparison trap/keeping up with the Jones mentality.  Like I said, I’m going out on a limb and making an assumption, but I see a lot of that in other situations on social media so I am sure it COULD apply in this instance, for some.  Social media can be a great platform for motivation, advice, etc but I think it can also add a lot of undo pressure to constantly perform at a certain level.  

Okay, I’m going to get off my soapbox that our bodies need rest…but I want to hear from you all down in the comments. 

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Question of the day

What are your thoughts around taking a running rest period between training cycles?