Downtime and Lessons Learned

The Portland Marathon destroyed me.  My feet were messed up for about two weeks.  The week following the event all I did was play soccer on one night.  The second week I went on a nine mile hike, played soccer, and ran 4.5 miles.  I’ve started logging some non-training events on my training calendar to avoid viewing training as a burden.  I can look at my rest days and training days and also smile at the other fun things I’ve done.

I’m still eating like a fat kid; it’s terrible.  My body is tip top, but I know what I’m dumping into it is going to lead to poor results if I keep it up.  My normal go-to food for straightening my diet is fruit.  I eat copious amounts of fruit when I’m hungry and it works.  This year is different; this year fruit crops suck.  I bought a few pounds of peaches to nosh on at work and they tasted like dirt.  I’m trying to cut energy drinks again and switch back to drinking tea all day.  My fitness is still there, but the health is not.

Training for the 50K in November is going alright.  I ran 10 miles on Saturday morning with a small group.   On Sunday I ran 13 miles around Timothy Lake after a night of camping.  Saturday was a group of like-minded people.  Sunday was with a girl that if she’d have ran to the moon, I’d have followed.  These are the runs that help me the most; I can’t fail in these atmospheres, I just forget I’m running sometimes.

Over the course of a year of training I've learned a lot of stuff.

Stretching could be one of the most important things ever; I almost never do it.  This year I’m going to focus on stretching far more often.  It comes down to not taking your physiology for granted.  I trust that my body will work hard when I need it to but I should be putting more time into the recovery of my body before things start to go wrong with it.

Long training sessions are important!  I put in a massive volume of training hours last year, but not enough long individual sessions.

It’s about the people around you.  The people you interact with daily have a huge impact on you and it will trickle down to your training; negative people are like sandbags on your shoulders.  If anyone thinks you’re crazy then good for them, but that’s their problem.  And on the positive side, people who motivate you and believe you can achieve your crazy goals could be your greatest resource. 

You can’t beat 5 AM workouts.  People at the gym when the doors open are fitting it into their life for a reason.  They have kids, they have work, and they could have a mushroom farm for all I care.  But the takeaway is that they are there to actually do their workout, and the ambiance of the gym is better because of it.  You don’t have the 8 PM dudes who spend half their “workout” wandering around talking to people and lifting up their shirts in front of the mirror.

Always have food around!  There will come plenty of times where time is not on your side.  When it’s not, having healthy munch-ables at hand like almonds or Powerbars will save you from fast food cravings. 

The last lesson learned is that it’s completely worth it.  These endurance hobbies get you around great people and help you stay fit and healthy.  Even if you have a bad performance on race day or feel like crap the morning of a race, you still have the benefits of the overall health gained from training.  Training is in no way a burden, it’s a key component to feeling energetic, happy, and overall on top of the world day after day after day.