Some Thoughts on Recovery

Today is the first day that I feel good enough to run, but with 9 days off already I'm just going to make it a full two weeks to play it really safe. The ART appointment on Wednesday should hopefully get me back to completely normal. Outside of the Calf and Achilles feeling much better, I've noticed that other aches and pains that I always thought were normal have disappeared. Competitive runners do a good job managing recovery in their micro-cycles (i.e. taking easy days in between weekly long runs, tempos etc.) but we don't always do so well with the macro-cycles (i.e. taking down time in between competitive seasons). We worry too much about losing fitness that we can never regain. In the past I've taken 2 weeks off after club nationals in December, but this year I didn't because I missed a lot of time due to injury last Spring. One thing I always seem to forget is that it's really hard to get out of shape once you are in shape. Roger Bannister took 4 or 5 days off before running his first sub-4:00 mile. As long as you can maintain your racing weight or not gain too much, it's not hard to get back into it. Normally when I take two weeks off, it only takes me a few runs to get back to normal everyday training pace.  So I'm just trying to chill like the monkey in the picture and will be more than ready to start running again next weekend. Not trying to force when I'll race again, but I'm thinking earliest possible would be Memorial Day weekend but realistically more like mid-June.