Michael: Two Days Off?

The spider web clouds
Drift past our iron barred view
Of the captured earth.

Monday, June 27, 2016

For the past 5 years I’ve tried to workout everyday until I hit a streak of 1,000 straight days. I came within a couple of hundred days this year. Today is the first time in that stretch, maybe longer - I’d have to check my journals, where I’m taking two days off in a row. That’ll be 4 days in total so far this year.

I know that the objectives of recovery from illness or injury and maintaining or improving athletic performance shouldn’t be in conflict, but when I don’t do or complete a workout, I feel disappointed. I don’t believe in penciling days off. Easy days yes, but it feels good to get outside for a while everyday and 99% of the time it’s not a problem.

It only becomes a problem when the contrasting objectives of recovery contradict the requirements of maintaining a streak, like they did last weekend when I got a very bad cold. I took it easy for a few days but still managed to workout. I even had a very good 9 mile trail run on Wednesday, but come my gym workout on Friday I knew I was in trouble and should’ve scratched the trip into town for some stretching or some other less rigorous workout. I got through it, but it set me back a few days with a high fever and heavily soaked in sweat clothes and bedding.

But it was also at the gym where I decided this is ridiculous. The operator/coach of the gym; a very strong weightlifter type, was also sick the same time I was. He was taking the week off to recover as he had lost 10 lbs. over the course of his illness. Now if a young, strong dude isn’t worried about taking a week off to recover why am I freaking out about two days?   And with a possible 50k coming up at the beginning of August I want to make sure I get in a few solid weeks of hard training before I start to taper. That may not happen if keep toying around with this cold.

The focus should be on my over all health. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still not going to schedule rest days and I still plan on completing the streak. I’m just hoping that during some stretch of my life that 99% of the time where the goals of the streak and fitness coincide will span over 1,000 days.