My friend Nikki sent me this website.
“We should run a marathon,” she said.
I thought about this for exactly 7 seconds and said, “I’ll run a 10K, but not a marathon.”
I’m still going to take a year to train for it. And this week is sooooo easy. 15 minutes today! (I’ve walked two 5Ks in the past two months, so 15 minutes is, well, a walk in the park.)
One of my major fitness pitfalls is an approach some call “overdoing it” or “all-or-nothing.” I recently read this article and her last reason for why people gain weight while training for distance running was a giant index finger pointing right at me. That’s my problem. Overtrain, under-recover, overstress. That might be why, three years ago when I ran 100 miles in a summer, gave up diet Coke and counted every calorie, I gained 15 pounds.
So this summer, I’m taking a different approach. I’m scheduling rest days. I am looking at the rest days as a key part of my training, not as a symbol of weakness that I’m not hitting the gym or trail every single day.
Plus, I have a wicked case of plantar fasciitis, and I don’t have a high enough pain threshold to manage without a rest day.
