When sometimes you just need to rest

Reflecting over the last few days being home sick with COVID again you can really take for granted being fit and healthy.

When training to keep fit or training for a big event, it is impossible to have completed a perfect training program (did every session and executed each session perfectly) and be in perfect physical condition. It is just humanly impossible. Rest assured that it is ok, after all we are human.

Starting out on any training program when you’ve usually done things on a whim can be daunting, the number of sessions or just how different it is from just going out for a jog. It’s hard to learn to run to a pace which is how most programs are set up. The skill of running to pace unfortunately, like most things happen with time. It is the repetition of doing different interval sessions and learning to listen to your body that you start to be able to run to a pace. As part of the learning process, you may stuff up a session, you may run when you’re supposed to be resting and rest when you’re supposed to be running. This is all part of the wonderful journey of a runner.

The goal of every session is to start - then complete it. Next, try and be consistent. What I mean by being consistent is don’t start an easy run at race pace and then because you’ve gone out too fast, you have to walk to finish it – run at a pace you can hold for the whole session, run each interval rep with a similar pace/time.

How you can complete a session has so many contributing factors. Did you get enough sleep, have you eaten enough food to fuel the session, are you hydrated sufficiently, what is the temperature, or just how your body feels that day after a big week? There can be so many variables and this leads to sometimes running out of juice in the last rep, getting half way through a long run and not feeling well that you have to stop. And you know what, it’s ok. We strive for that perfection that no one, not even an Olympian can achieve. When we don’t achieve it we put ourselves down and we shouldn’t.

As it’s now been two weeks of not training myself, it’s a friendly reminder that as much as we may feel guilty about missing sessions, when we have good reasons for why – it’s ok. No one can prevent illness or when life serves you lemons; it happens and it’s not your fault. The important thing is when you do get sick or if you’re stressed is that you give your body time to recover. Sometimes training metrics can help you to know if you are ready to get back into training (resting heart rate) or if you need longer time than usual to recover between sessions (working heart rate higher than what is your usual – means your body has worked harder and in turn it will take longer to recover). Listen to your body. Rocking up to a start line feeling 50% because you’ve forced yourself to train compared to allowing you time to rest and being 100% at the start line can make the difference between ticking a box and smashing personal goals. The first rule and advice that I would give to any runner experienced or just getting started is look after yourself and listen to your body!