Run, Rest, Repeat!

I've been in a bit of a run funk over the last week or so, and after taking some much needed family time I feel great! Let's back track a little bit....at the beginning of the year, I set out to become a Half Fanatic. For those that aren't famiailar with what that entails, it's a large group of runners who are fanatical about running half marathons, and the group has a series of levels in which you have to meet said criteria. For me to be accepted into the "asylum", I needed to finish either 3 half marathons in 90 days OR 2 half marathons in 16 days. If you've followed some of my other posts, you know I completed the Philly Love Run, Iron Girl, and Frederick Running Festival in a span of 35 days. Before completing these races, I was selected to be a 2014 race ambassador for the St. Michael's Running Festival. St. Michael's should have been my fourth (fifth overall) half marathon in 48 days. After the Frederick Half and becoming an offical Half fanatic my motivation started to dwindle, and I had very little motivation to run. Luckily (or so I thought)I signed-up for two monthly challenges with my local BGR! groups. My goal for May was to complete a minimum of 50, not to exceed 60 miles. Very doable and since I wanted to keep up my long runs in between races, I thought ok why not. I did a solo 10 miles, and was on cloud 9, because I was at top of the BGR! leaderboard (well fourth place). Somehow, I started looking at all these numbers, miles, days, etc, and said oh no there is no way in hell I'm doing another 13.1 anytime soon, I'll just run the 10k. Nonetheless after a few hiccups at home, my only option to take the 1.5 hour trip to St. Michael's was get up at 4 a.m. Saturday morning. Even that didn't seem like a long-shot, since I'm a morning person BUT I just didn't have a desire to do anything and was just tired. So I took the weekend off, not doing a single movement of physical activty. Spent some time with family & friends, stuffed my face, and I feel so refresehed today. I'm back on track with both my eating choices and did over 50 minutes on the ellipitical this morning. I'm looking forward to getting in some short runs with my BGR! and W.E. Run! groups this week, and we'll take it from there. So the moral of the story is so listen to your body. The running community is superb, and it's so easy to put up money for race fees because you wan't to keep up with the joneses. Truthly, that may not always work for everybody. Trust your gut. There will always be more races, but you only have one body and one family. If that mean's taking an extra rest day or two, so be it. Besides, proper rest and recovery are just as essential to running as hill training and tempo runs. Never neglect allowing your body time to rest. In fact, if you don't do so already, incorporate at least one full day of rest into your training plan. Depending on the week, mine typically has two; one for active-rest (light actvity usually yoga, pilates, or walking) and one day for complete rest. Also, remember if you are a first-time half or full marathoner, most experts recommend taking a day of rest for every mile. With time you're recovery will diminish.