I was going to take a rest day today because my legs are pretty much toasted. Ran my 3.8 miles yesterday and then went through a leg workout at the gym. I could feel my hamstrings cramping when I was watching "the Expendables" in the theatre last night.
I considered taking today off, entirely, from running, or maybe just running 2.8 miles.
Trouble is, I'm in a workout frame of mind. People know I can do pretty much anything... unless it involves moderation. So, I can slack, but I can't slack just a little bit. I go whole-hog. That's part of the reason I'll say things like, "I don't like vacations." Too easy to shift into those gears and too hard to shift out.
Right now, I am looking forward to daily workouts. One thing I know, with my compulsive personality, is that when I have a virtuous compulsion, I need to go with it and feed it.
Logan's Mom had to work today and I'm home with him all day. (Except for my Arabic class where I'll hire a sitter.) So, that means here in the house, with three productive activities at my disposal: studying Arabic, doing the P-90X "Ab Ripper X" workout, and running on the treadmill.
Being that I'm stuck here, I'll probably do exactly the opposite of a rest day and go ahead and do a long run day. "Long", by the way, is a relative term.
My daily runs have been 3.8 miles. I'm going to introduce a Lactate Threshold workout, which will be 3.8 miles, but at a faster tempo. I'll also introduce a long-run day, which will be 4.8 miles instead of 3.8.
I may introduce a few easy days of 2.8 miles. (The .8 is because of a .4 mile warmup and .4 mile cooldown.) Not sure about that, though. Personally, I'd like to keep the recovery days at 3.8 miles, just do them slower.
It's hard sometimes for me to put together a realistic training plan, because my brain is still back in the mode of where I was after my first marathon. At that point in my fitness, a 6 mile daily run was the norm. If I only got in 4 miles, I felt like it was a very short workout and that I couldn't do that very often.
Also, my splits were much faster. For the most part, easy daily runs were sub 8 min/miles. That's important to note because it's not just the total distance that's a factor, but also the time you spend on your feet.
Sorry, but if you hold the heart rate constant, a person with lesser fitness who runs 10 minute miles is working a LOT harder to do a 6 mile training run than a fitter person who runs 7:30s. One of them is done in 45 minutes while the other is pounding pavement for an entire hour.
Ultimately, I like the 6 mile distance for a daily training run. For one thing, it allows you to do a proper warmup and cooldown. For another, you're splitting your training routine almost evenly between glycogen metabolism and fat-burning. So, you're training both systems, both of which are necessary for distance training.
It also serves as a good foundation for true long-distance days since you add an 8 miler, then 10, then 12, etc. If you're only covering 4 miles a day, like I'm doing, now, that's just not enough foundation for distance training.
I'm slowly, but surely committing to the idea of training for a marathon. Maybe in the Spring, provided my plantar fasciitis doesn't re-appear.
So, today, I'm going to do a distance day of 4.8 instead of taking the day off or doing a light day. I'm in the house most of the day, and there's not a lot else to do.
I'll also find the P90X Ab Ripper X workout and hit that as well. That'll just leave me with running, plus arms and back for the rest of the week.
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