Recovery Rest and Gaining Strength

Good morning.

I have designated this week as, niggle be gone week. This will be a week of healing. A week for my body to glue itself back together. During a marathon training cycle the body puts up with a lot of stresses. You feel tired sometimes and feel a niggle here and there. It is just part of the process. We all know, I hope, that you only get stronger when you rest and recover. I want to let my body get stronger.

In a sense, this is an experiment for me. I will monitor my body and run again when I feel it has healed enough. That may be tomorrow, Wednesday or whenever.Then it will be time for a very healthy final push towards Boston. I feel it cannot hurt to rest more than normal, just once. I remember training hard for Chicago and ran most of the marathon in some sort of pain. I don't want that to happen in Boston.

Since my 22 miler on Friday I have only done the elliptical on Saturday and Sunday with 6 and 5 miles, respectively. I also had an excellent 15 mile bike training session on the indoor trainer yesterday.

I can already feel the effects of taking two days off of running. When I get out of bed there is no stiffness, been a while. The springy legs are returning. The muscles seem to be getting denser, more solid, glued back together.

This week my wife and I will be in Naples, FL visiting her mom and dad. Going to Naples is one of my favorite things to do. It is only a couple hours flight and the beach there is beautiful. It is also a great beach to run on during low tide. The sand is hard. I may do some barefoot running as well. I will stay in touch.


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" Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction."

* It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before... to test your limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anais Nin