Permission for More Time Off

Time: none
Distance: none

I spoke with Jailhouse Jeff last night while he was driving to class and we discussed training. I have no immediate plans to race again this fall which can be bad for motivation. I told Jeff that I thought my poor performance in Japan was due to having incredibly tired legs. Even the rest and extra sleep on the days traveling to Japan weren't enough to get my body recovered. I admit that my last two months of training have been solid but nothing extraordinary. Workouts were good, but not great. I believe that I was more impressive during the summer months back in Oklahoma. It has been good to take some time off and the time off has been in large part to traveling back from Japan and catching a nasty cold. The difference in my leg freshness can only be described by looking at the splits of yesterday's run: 7:14, 6:45, 6:28, 6:14, 6:11.

That was a morning run. I slowed down in effort after seeing the 6:14 split only to follow it up with a 6:11. Let's go back and look at an afternoon double run a few days prior to leaving for Japan: 7:45, 7:03, 6:50, 6:43, 6:30. I felt terrible that run, granted it was after 25 x 400. However, it was a much harder effort that what I did yesterday morning.

Jeff pointed out that I never really took that much time off after the OKC Memorial Marathon or the Boomtown Days Half Marathon. I have had more days off since returning from Japan than I had all summer. That's not a bad thing or a good thing, just making it known. My aerobic fitness is still high despite not training vigorously for a couple of weeks. I look forward to putting something on the calendar and resuming soon.