My Running Journal, 021910

Today is a rest day – no running, no lifting. Just sit back and rest. Knowing this, I slept in this morning. Instead of getting out of bed at 6am, I got out of bed at 7am. The extra hour felt good.

Rest and recuperation are components of the overall process of increasing physical capacity. You can only go for so long in top gear before you run out of gas. And this applies to all things. If you never give yourself the space to ease back, you will most likely burnout at some point, or collapse completely when you do finally take a break.

Sleep is like that. From what I have read, sleeping like a “stone” is not always a good thing. Dropping into bed at the end of the day, and then waking up either fatigued or feeling like you didn’t get any sleep is a good indicator that you have been pushing yourself for too long. There have been several studies/analyses done of sleep patterns, and there seems to be a trend towards binge sleeping. You know, when you sleep poorly throughout the week, and then spend your off days sleeping away the morning. As a child or teenager, this isn’t so bad, as your body in the process of building itself, and most of that growth happens when you are asleep. As an adult, most of the time spent in deep sleep is when your body is repairing itself.

The extra hour that I slept this morning wasn’t a “binge,” – in my defense, I had a cold yesterday, and didn’t really realize it until after I had already gone on my run – I chalked up the stuffy sinuses and runny nose to the spring-like weather, and all of the blooming going on. It wasn’t until later in the morning when I realized that I was considerably more fatigued than normal, light-headed, and really achey. All signs that you have a cold. So I cooked myself after lunch, and before my Crossfit onramp. I have a heated massage table, and cranked that up, and tuned the heat up in the treatment room to about 80. Hopped on the table, and took a nap. Woke up about an hour later, feeling very hot, dehydrated, and not very achy. I drank about a gallon of water, took a gram of Vitamin C, and began to feel a great deal better. Not fatigued, less achy, few if any telltale signs of an actual cold. I still had the runny nose, but again, spring-like weather and all.

My Onramp class focused on front and overhead squats last night, as well as an exercise called “Burpees.” I know burpees as “8 count body builders,” or “suck.” The very basic concept of a burpee is that you start standing, then you are face down on the ground, and then you are back standing up, jump and clap. That is one. The USMC taught me a variation on that – a much more regimented version that does the same thing, but is broken down into an eight count movement. From standing upright, the count is
Bend over at the waist, hands to the hips (1)
Hands to the ground, drop to a squat position (2)
Jump the legs back into a plank position (3)
Lower your chest to the ground (4)
Push back up to a plank position (5)
Jump back into the squat (6)
Stand upright (7)
Jump up and clap over head (8).
Repeat until you vomit (seriously, 8 count body builders are the definition of Ad Nauseum)

The workout last night was 21-15-9 overhead squats and burpees, for time. I finished in 6:15, and I think I managed 5 disciplined 8 counts, and then everything just sort of turned to slop.

By the end of the class, I was winded. I got home, ate a salad with some bread (exactly the opposite of the recommendation of the Paleo diet), soaked, and went to bed. The extra hour allowed me some more recovery time, and I am happy to say that whatever cloud bug I had, I’m pretty sure I cooked it out of myself.