This is been something of a half-assed rest week, with a few extra miles on Wednesday and Thursday bookended by the race last Sunday and a long run this Sunday. True, I didn’t run much the week before, but two half-rest weeks don’t add up to one real rest week.
I experiment with my training and I learn things, but it’s never a clean experiment. I have to make choices, and I have to live with the results. Not that I think missing out on the deeper recovery I’d get from a proper rest week is going to really hurt me, but I can’t go back and do the last two weeks over again, so I’ll never know for sure.
So today I made sure to take it easy, or at least keep it short. I ran the flat 4 mile loop from our house that’s about 75% bike paths, with a short extension to return a library book. It’s one of my usual easy-day loops, but I haven’t been running it much because I’ve been biking on those days instead.
I didn’t run hard, but when I looked at my Garmin data afterwards, I averaged about 20 seconds faster per mile than the last couple of times I ran that route at a similar level of effort as measured by my HRM. That could be a testimony to the power of training or just the joy or running in cooler weather. Either way, I’ll take it.
(4.2 mi. run; 147.5#)