April from Run the Great Wide Somewhere, Erika from MCM Mama Runs, and Patty from No-Guilt Life. This week's topic is on Taking Breaks From Running.
This topic is very timely as I'm currently doing a very minimal amount of running and about to take a 12 day break all together while on vacation in Walt Disney World with my family. I've never taken a break from running this long before, the only time was when I got my appendix out, but I know it'll be good for me.
My heart is just not in training right now. It's no secret I've had a crazy race schedule up until this point: 16 races for a total of 161.3 race miles and that's not even counting training miles since that included 4 5ks, 5 10ks, 5 halves and 2 fulls! My body is tired and mentally I'm exhausted. Running all of the races plus going to school full time while working has made me tired. Working out is a crazy balance I have found: too much makes me tired and too little makes me tired.
I've been running since completing the Pixie Dust Challenge(recaps here:10k+ Half) but not much. My morning runs have been cut in favor of sleep and my weekend runs are not long. I did some hill repeats on Sunday and actually felt good! I want to feel like that all of time and know taking a break will help me do that.
That doesn't mean I won't work out though. I plan on working out almost every single day I'm on vacation by doing PiYo in the morning, walking the parks all day and then core work and stretching at night. I also am packing my roller to make sure I stay loose.
I'm hoping this break will help me refocus my training and also get stronger. My training is restarting for Dumbo with a heavy focus on speed work every week and learning to run in humidity again-gross but that's running in the summer. The only races I have planned is a 5k on 4th of July and the Pasadena 80s Run 10k a few weeks later.
Anyone else on a running break?