Taking a Time Out

To use a basketball analogy, I decided to take a bit of a time out, hopefully of the 30-second variety. After several days of putting up with some very sore quads, a general overall worn down feeling, and a painful spot on my right hamstring/knee (basically where I scraped everything up when I fell on the manhole cover), I decided that maybe a break was in order, so I took yesterday and today off and will skip tomorrow's long run in favor of an easy 35-40 minutes. Hopefully I'll be able to get back on track after that.

After some review of the past couple weeks, I think I just pushed myself over the edge. One sure sign is all the eye twitching I've had recently. Many times when I get really fatigued and/or stressed out, one of my eyes will start twitching, and the left one has been driving me nuts recently. I also checked my resting heart rate and it was just over 50, whereas it's usually in the lower 40's. That's another sign that I've overdone it a bit.

Looking back, I guess I was already working pretty hard in training, especially for someone who just started back a little over a month ago. I've been hammering away at the core work too, something that has been very beneficial but takes additional time and energy. When you factor in the fall and the need for my body to recover from that and the stress of the situation with Leslie's grandmother passing away, I think it was all just a little too much for me to be able to maintain a high level of running throughout, which is what I tried to do.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good as I type this, having a lot more energy than I've had over the past few days. One thing I'm going to do going forward is pay a lot more attention to the little things such as diet and rest/recovery. I need to figure out a way to get a little more variety in my diet, and I want to see if I can't start getting myself in bed a little earlier than I have been too. I also think I'm going to start taking NuBound again. I feel like it was making a difference when I was taking it last fall, but I just stopped, mainly because of the cost. I'm gonna give it another shot, and if it helps enough, I'll just have to suck it up and shell out the money.

I said coming in to this year that I was going to get as dedicated as I used to be and do whatever it took to succeed, and while I've done ok in a lot of areas, I haven't done as well as I should have. With Spring quickly approaching, it's definitely time to get serious and that's just what I plan on doing. This little time out has been brief, but it's helped me get refocused. Time to go to work!