Rest and Recovery

Please excuse the randomness of my thoughts today. Stick with me...I do get somewhere at the end.

During the typical week, it is very easy for me to schedule a "rest" day from exercise. I look at my calendar, choose the busiest day, and call that my "rest" day. I use the word rest lightly- I am a wife, a mom of 2 children and work full time. Rest is a relative term.

Tomorrow, I am doing a killer workout (SOOO EXCITED!!!!!) with a group of friends from my gym. I'm looking froward to a great Saturday workout and on Sunday I run. That's what I do on Sundays; I run. That leaves today (Thursday) to be my rest day for the week. The weather has been pretty crummy around here and when I woke up this morning it was actually perfect running weather.

I want to run today. I know that rest days are important. I am sore this morning and want to be in top condition for my workout tomorrow. I googled "Are rest days important for exercise" and got back 19,300,000 results in .19 seconds.

I've started looking at training plans for my 1/2 marathon (I'm starting to hate the 1/2 part of that..... It sure doesn't feel like 1/2 of anything!). All of the training plans call for 5 days of running and/or cross training and 2 days of recovery. 2 days?!?! I work out 6 days a week. 2 days!??!? Am I unusual for working out 6 days a week. Isn't that normal for people that are into healthy living?

The same behaviors that caused me to get up to 356 pounds, have also caused me to lose 165 pounds.

excessiveness (eating til I wanted to puke), addiction (candy bars in the checkout isle), and routine (night time ice cream)

excessiveness (restricting calories- sometimes too restrictive), addiction (It's Sunday; I run on Sundays), and routine (oatmeal and a banana for breakfast)

This post isn't really ending where it started. I'm going to "rest" today. I'm getting a hair cut, going out to lunch with a friend, and driving around to look at Christmas light tonight. I might go for a walk, but it won't be rigorous and I won't even strap on my heart rate monitor. Rest doesn't have to mean total lack of activity.

~Kari