Took two rest days in a row, first time I can recall doing that in quite a while, perhaps since my oral surgery days of this past winter. It wasn't planned, so technically, the second rest day was what some of us call a TURD (Totally Unplanned Rest Day), but also technically, my half marathon training schedule did in fact call for two rest days in a row. It does this a couple of times, but on the previous occasions I took karate classes on the second rest day so it really wasn't. Yesterday I had every intention of going to the dojo; had my bag packed and with me when I went to feed my pet sitees, but I had this really horrible feeling of dojo burnout, plus I was tired, so I just headed back home after doing pet duties (which, thankfully, have been routine so far).
I don't get dojo burnout often - in fact I can't recall the last time it happened. But Thursday was pretty much a zoo - I taught the newbie kids in what turned out to be a pretty good class, then was supposed to team teach the upper belt kids with two other people, one of whom had never taught there before (she's a teacher by profession). I really wanted to back down and just assist, but New Teacher seriously broke routine (which is fine, but it calls for a high degree of control and focus) and then kept deferring to me, and the kids sense lack of clear direction like a shark smells blood. So I wound up taking over the class and after a zillion push-ups, order was restored. (Second asst. teacher totally saw what was happening and just kept out of the way - good man.) Final class was adult class, and I really just wanted to DO, not direct, but the guy who was supposed to teach, a black belt who formerly ran his own school, ALSO kept deferring to me (WTFF??) so I finally broke the class in two and he took the white belt student and I took the upper belts. After a bit I just let them (and myself!) have an open dojo. Everyone there was testing this fall and has stuff to work on, so I figured we could all use the individual practise time.
I normally really enjoy teaching but that was more than I bargained for that night, and I just couldn't look at the place on Saturday. I did eventually pick up a kettlebell and toss it around for a bit, but not enough for what I'd call a workout.
So today was another one of those "race" days (Higdon has optional races building into the training schedule), supposedly a 15K. I just mapped my own course around town and did that instead of a race, planning to run and time myself as if it were a race. Well, I effed that up early on, forgetting an early turn and having to wend my way through some unfamiliar territory to try to get back on course. Oops. So much for knowing the distance... And also - you'd figure that after two rest days, I'd come out feeling pretty fresh and having a nice time. Wellllll, not so much. It seems that whatever pathetic little internal speedometer sense I do have goes away completely if I take even just two days away from running (I've noticed this before, so today wasn't special in that regard). I'm pretty sure I started way too fast and burned out early. The last third of the run absolutely sucked and I was not pleased with the time overall.
I know bad runs happen, and in the course of the training program so far that was probably really the only one that sucked grievously, but it still did suck grievously. It made me wish I'd never set anything other than a finishing goal for this half. And perhaps I should just make finishing the goal; complete the training as planned, go for best pace/time given the conditions of race day, and screw the rest. (Heh, I can't do much more than that, anyway.) And perhaps I'd just best not wallow in this, and instead figure out what I'm doing in the gym tomorrow!
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