From Fat to Triathlete

Tag: rest day

Rest Day

January 24, 2012

Since it is still early in my training, every other day is a rest day.  This will change in about 2 weeks, and I will only have 2 rest days a week, then as training progresses, that will drop to one.  On my rest days I don’t fully rest, I walk.  There are two reasons for this;

  1. It’s important for Wrigley and Marshall to go on  a walk each day, so I go for them.  Plus, I like spending time with them to start my day.
  2. I feel like if I don’t do something it will be easy for me to lose my momentum and I will quit all together.

So, on rest days I walk.  Somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 miles.  And I don’t walk fast.  Although, some days I wrestle with that decision.  I wonder if I should turn it into a “power walk”  and really expend the energy.  But then I think that defeats the purpose of  a rest day.  And I know I get faster as I get more in shape, but for now, I’m not pushing the fast on rest days.

What do you think?  Should I turn my walk into more of a workout?  Or should i continue with my slower less taxing walks?  I’d be interested to hear different opinions.

Today’s walk was 1.23 miles in 30 minutes.

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If you are anything like me, when you first start an exercise program and you are still excited about it, it’s sometimes hard to remember to rest.  You feel good, you are ready to get fit, things are all moving in a positive direction.  Why waste a day resting.  But resting is critical to your improvement.  How, you ask, can I gain fitness when all I do is walk a few minutes.  I should be running and sweating.

Well, it is just as important to rest as it is to run.  Resting gives your body time to recover and repair any damage caused by the work you have done.  My marathon training plan calls for two rest days a week.  One is the day before the scheduled long run to give my body a chance to prepare and be the best it can be.  The other rest day, for me, is on Monday.  Hopefully I have gotten in a long run and some cross training on Saturday and Sunday (it might vary which is which depending on what I have going on).

So, even though it seems counter productive, don’t forget to rest.  Your body will thank you.

In other exciting news, I have added a countdown timer to the marathon on March 21st.  As if I weren’t thinking about it enough, now I will know down to the minute how much time I have left to train.

Here is my training schedule for the upcoming week

Sunday:  2 mile run

Monday: rest day

Tuesday: 3 mile run

Wednesday: 3 mile run

Thursday: 3 mile run

Friday: rest day

Saturday: 6 mile run

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Still tri-in

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