I'm Ready for a New Step-up Week. Are you?

Today is day one of week 10 out of 18. As you can see from my workout log, I took it easy last week in order to recover from last week's 18-miler. It really took a lot out of me. The strange thing is that the symptoms of overtraining were not what you would expect...my muscles weren't sore (thank you, ice bath!), I didn't feel exhausted or weak, I didn't have any injuries. I just didn't FEEL like running. That's it. And when I did run, I just felt like I needed to go nice and easy. Doing anything else felt wrong.

The terrible part of listening to your body, though, is that it makes you feel guilty and lazy, and part of me worried that the drive to run would never come back! We follow these tables that tell us what to do in order to prepare for the marathon, but in the end, no recipe works for everyone and if you feel like you need a rest, you just need to take one. The part of my head that wasn't worried, reassured me that if over the last few months running had made me feel stronger, healthier, upbeat, and all of a sudden, after one long run I didn't feel that way anymore, it would most definitely pass. Also, there is a reason that step-back weeks are included in the program-- sometimes your body just needs to recuperate.

It's a new week. Sweetie has officially started his training for the half-marathon in Trieste at the beginning of May, so we can do our weekday runs together. Yeah!