Good morning all! Or I guess it’s basically the afternoon now. Funny how Sundays seem to fly by!

Hope you’ve recovered from your St. Patty’s Day fun from yesterday, or are at least in the process of recovering. I guess that’s the nice thing about it being on a Saturday this year, is having Sunday to rest! I know that we are all really trying to recover from eating so much food last night at Sarah’s Irish feast. It was better than I expected! Corned beef, cabbage and carrots, new potatoes, and Irish soda bread. Plus maybe an Irish beverage or two…although the soda bread was by far my favorite item!

At least we don’t need as much rest and recovery this year as we did after our St. Patty’s Day during our freshman year of college. Any night that ends in a cab going through the Taco Bell drive-through is trouble. Yikes.

Speaking of rest days…as I get farther along in my half-marathon training, I am definitely starting to appreciate my rest days more and more! Some people are able to run five and six days a week without any risk of injury, but I am just not one of those people. My faulty left knee would just not be able to handle that!

So instead I stick to my three days of running, two days of cross-training and weights, and two days of rest. Some weeks, I can’t wait for Wednesday and Sunday to roll around! So far, this schedule has allowed me to safely increase my running distances each week without injury – hope-I-didn’t-just-jinx-myself knock-on-wood.

When you’re training for a big event, or even just participating in a mix of challenging workouts every week, rest days are so important. Your body has to be able to recover, and build strength in the process. And I’m not talking about active rest, where you still participate in some form of physical activity at a lower level of intensity. For me, I need two full rest days with pretty minimal activity (barring the occasional easy stroll around the block).

Some people might be able to get by with only one rest day, or with one active rest day and one full rest day. It’s important to figure out the schedule that works best for you and your body. Because it doesn’t really matter what works for me, it matters what works for you!

And remember – even world class athletes make time for rest. So don’t feel like a slacker if you go a day or two without hitting the gym. And if this just seems too difficult to do, you might need to reevaluate your motivations and mental associations behind working out. This is one of those cases where too much of a good thing can be bad for you, physically and emotionally!

As for me, I’m off to enjoy my rest day with a little relaxation, and maybe a little bit of working. All with the NCAA tournament on in the background of course. Sad to see my Dores lose last night, but excited to see the Cats move on! Sweet Sixteen here we come baby!