Blood, sweat and tears

Heavy legs that had to be pleaded with to carry me a few metres more. Music in my ears that failed to give me the energy I needed. Absence of anything beautiful to look at while I ran that could give me a kick – just grey skies, grey buildings, grey ice. The boring old route home from work.

Winter does not want to let go.

I could tell right from the start that it was going to be a tough run. Not the kind of tough that gets better once you've started, but the other kind, the one that wipes you out. The whole week has been tough. I had to fight for every metre, hell, every centimetre that took me closer to home. My pulse was higher than usual, again.

Running wise it was supposed to be a recovery week. A week with fewer planned kilometres. And it was: I've only run 21 kilometres up to now, which with the long run planned this weekend together with my running group will add up to maybe 35. However, I haven't had a pure rest day in over a week. I've been training every day, sometimes with two sessions within the same day. Take yesterday, for example. I went for an 11 km run in the morning, and then went climbing in the afternoon. Climbing was unscheduled and in hindsight it might have been better if I had skipped it.

The training schedule that I came up with a week or two ago has no pure rest days, but I tried to alternate between 4-5 activities in order to have some run free days. So when I don't run, I might swim instead, or climb – which use different muscles and give my legs a chance to rest. Some days I'll do yoga, which is a gentler all-around workout. There is a planned activity every day, but not the same one several days in a row.

This schedule will of course be revised as needed. One of the activities might have to go. I am not a slave to it either. If I don't feel like going for a run, I just don't. It's more of a guideline so that I don't do too much of one thing or too little of another (*cough* swimming *cough*).

As I really want to go running on Saturday, I will take a pure rest day tomorrow and hope that it's enough to restore my energy. I'm going to need it.