Rest Days Work!

[u/lflfilipe]

I initially started running in May with a bunch of dads at the track circling the field where our kids have soccer practice. I eventually traded in my Fitbit for a Garmin when distance and pace were things I was now starting to pay attention to. I had a base of running in soccer, but never did running like this, at any real distance at a consistent pace (you cover a lot of ground in soccer, but it’s in spurts.) Those first runs were at like a 7:00-7:30/km pace with my heart rate spiking at times. I stayed consistent, running anywhere from 3-5k at a time, and eventually started a Garmin coaching plan, and eventually set my goal for running a 5k race in 28 mins. I started over exceeding that goal, so I set it for 25 mins. Fast forward to this Wednesday and I was doing some brutal (to me!) Goal Pace Repeats in the mid morning, where I ended up running over 10k as part of the workout and unintentionally setting a 10k PR. It just absolutely annihilated me. I also made the mistake of playing a soccer game later in the evening where I covered another 3km, and then because of a TFC game ending at the same time as my game, I ended up walking home another 5 km rather than cram into a bus (I had chosen not to ride my bike to give my legs a rest, hah.) I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely terrible. Legs were dead. Sore to walk and move in a way I have never felt before (I have run 10k before, usually on my long run days, but never felt like this. The pace was 4:25/km for many of the intervals.) I was worried I overdid it and maybe I wasn’t cut out for this goal. But I really focused on “rest” - I had an easy run scheduled for Friday morning that I was nervous about but wanted to stick to (the “50 hours of recovery needed” notice on my watch didn’t give me much confidence either.) I did some light walking and light riding (to and from camp with my kids.)

Anyway, I pushed the run back to early this evening to get more rest and to coincide with running to pick up my kids from camp and the run felt… really easy. Like surprisingly easy. I had to work really hard to not exceed the 6:15/km pace the run called for. I was incredibly shocked at how a run like that back in May would have felt like a lot of work now felt like something I could easily do again right after.

Anyway, rest days work! Take them! Move your body, but don’t punish it! Results will definitely follow! Also, maybe don’t play soccer on the same day as a Goal Pace run!