If there is one piece of advice I’d give to any new or aspiring runner, it would be don’t place limitations on yourself based on assumptions. For a while, this prevented me from attempting a Marathon. I assumed that it was a certainty that at some stage during a Marathon, I would hit the wall and it would be agony making my way to the finish. Eventually I plucked up enough courage to sign up, entered the race still expecting to hit the wall and yet never did. I have done a couple of times since, but on that day the biggest issues I had were blisters and chafing, problems I’ve learnt how to deal with over subsequent Marathons.
Rather than place limitations on yourself based on assumptions, go out and test yourself and see how your body reacts. Sensibly of course – if you’ve only ever run a 5k, it’s probably a bad idea to set out for a Marathon, but you might be able to keep going to 5 miles if you try. Because many times you’ll surprise yourself with how your body responds. Occasionally that will be an unwanted surprise, like how in the space of 9 months in 2019 I went from being able to run a comfortable sub-4 hour Marathon to not being able to finish inside of 5 hours, but more often than not I find myself pleasantly surprised by how my body responds. My 100 day run streak for example. I’d assumed I’d either be constantly tired, my body would break down with an injury or both, yet neither happened and instead I got faster and stronger.
That run streak brings me nicely onto rest days. Running every day was fine when my longest run was around one hour, but once I found myself wanting to go for longer runs at least once per week, it suddenly became an issue. It would take so long to recover from the long run without a rest day that I only really enjoyed the Friday, Saturday and Sunday runs as the others were all slogs, and once I reinstalled at least one rest day into my week, everything was suddenly better. I enjoyed more of my runs, I felt stronger and I was progressing quicker.
I’m not about to rethink whether I should take a rest day, but rather when I take a rest day. On the whole, I’ve tended to take my rest day the day after my longest run of the week. This wasn’t based on anything other than it seemed logical. The closer to your long run, the higher your recovery needs, so therefore the obvious day to take a rest day was the day after the long run.
And I didn’t give it much thought until one week my non-running life forced me to change my schedule. I had the choice of moving my rest day to two days after my long run or taking two rest days after the long run. I chose the former, and was surprised by what I found. Often when taking a rest day the day after a long run, my body stiffened up over the course of the day, and when I came to run the following day, it was very difficult. Whereas when I ran the day after the long run, the first 15 minutes or so were again very difficult, but when I’d warmed up, I started to feel okay. After the run, I felt pretty good and that stiffness which normally set in across the rest day didn’t arrive.
Last week my schedule again forced me to change my training routine, and once again, my experience was surprisingly positive. So much so that this week, I’ve voluntarily changed my schedule, and after 27km off-road yesterday, by the end of today’s run I was finding a decent pace at relatively minimal effort. So is it here for good? It’s a case of wait and see. So far everything has been positive so I’m definitely going to continue, but it’s a very small sample size I’m working with currently. After a different long run, maybe a slightly hillier route or a longer run or a faster effort, will I feel the same?
Scorpo Stories 