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Run Stats:

Duration: 35:58
Distance: about 3.5 miles

I felt a little sore the first mile, but after that I felt great – I made sure to walk down any steep downhills and mostly avoided hills to protect my knees, but I pushed myself on the second half of the run and it felt really good to fly along the trail like that!

When I got back from my run, I was starving. I was going to try my new Gardenburgers tonight, but instead made a quick go-to meal of mine: a pita spread with pb, topped with a sliced banana, and folded in half. I had a gala apple on the side. Not long after that, I made some dessert: one tofutti cutie (peanut butter flavor) with one tablespoon of White Chocolate Wonder PB. Today’s snacks were a Peanut Butter Cookie Larabar before lunch (delicious! Will be buying this again!) and a mini ClifBar around 9 p.m.

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I was planning on re-capping last week’s half-marathon training, but I feel like talking about rest days and listening to your body instead. The first paragraph of this post sounds very positive, like it is easy for me to take a rest day. Well, it sure isn’t! Even now, I am second-guessing myself about it.

One side of me thinks that I’ll be fine, it’s just soreness, I just need to push through the pain! I’ll get my speed work day out of the way, and then I have a shorter run Wednesday and a scheduled rest day on Thursday. I can make it until then! I already made one change to my running plan last week/this week, and I really shouldn’t screw around with it any further!

The other side of me has these facts.

1. My knees hurt. The pain isn’t terrible, but it’s bad enough that I have to limp a bit to go down stairs.

2. Running repeats around a track with knee pain is not going to help with my training. I am at my best for training when I do not feel pain. It is okay to feel sore, and I do feel sore – but not pain, which is what I am feeling in my knees today. Running speed work with pain could make this minor pain, which will probably go away if I just take a rest day, turn into something more serious and lead to taking more time off than just one rest day. It could even turn into an injury that would prevent me from running my marathon!

3. I talked with a friend who lives in my house who pushed herself too much running and didn’t take enough rest days. She now has chronic knee pain and has to be very careful about her running. I love that I don’t have any recurring running injuries and I would like to keep it that way.

4. No training plan is set in stone. I found my training plan online. It is a good plan for the average intermediate runner. However, it is not Lindsay-specific; it was not designed especially for me, so how in the world could it be the perfect plan for me that I absolutely must follow? Reason: it’s not! Adapting the plan to suit my own needs and my own body will not be harmful; it will be helpful! As long as I use the plan as a general guideline, which I am, I will be ready for my half-marathon.

Obviously the logical thing to do is to take a rest day. It is the perfectionist in me telling me to stick to the schedule, to push through the pain! But tonight, I’m not going to listen.

I’m going to make a commitment not to run my speed work tomorrow.

Instead, I will cross train on the elliptical and do a yoga video. I will tentatively adapt my plan for this week to:

Tuesday: cross train, yoga
Wednesday: 3 m easy run
Thursday: 6×400 at 5-k pace
Friday: cross train, yoga
Saturday: 4-6 mile run

I am a bit anxious about this, but I’m sure that it is the right thing to do, and I will just have to stick out the anxiety! I’ll update tomorrow on how it’s going

Good night everyone!