I woke up this morning feeling like poo, but knowing that I had it in me to get on with things. That made me happy, but I do hate waking up feeling anything less than energetic. The rain this morning dampened my enthusiasm a little further. A run can cure that, thought, so that’s what I went out to do — despite the rain.
Trying to make myself feel like running…
I had taken a day and a half off to rest after over-working myself to a pretty severe degree on Monday. My run time today was very strange: 21:14. That is exactly the same run time I turned in on Day 24, the day after I broke myself off. Of course, today felt entirely different. Whereas it was an effort just to finish two days ago, today it was an effort to restrain myself and not run too fast. I can still feel the effects of overtraining, but they are not as pronounced. My shin splints are also going away… so yay!
I didn’t feel comfortable going to lift weights today. I didn’t feel like avoiding the gym, I just did not feel as steady as I should to do the lifts I wanted to do. I needed to make up my missed weight workouts, after all, and that means (by my thinking) doing more large movements with heavy weight. The best thing I have found to do on make-up days are huge movements like dead-lifts, cleans, flat bench, etc. but all of those are a little scary to do alone on a day where I feel well-rested and energetic. I do not want to go in there feeling a little tired and have no spotter as I try some of those. So I just opted out. This is one of the primary reasons I hate working out alone… there is no one to back me up who I feel comfortable with and I am not confident pushing myself like I should without anyone else around.
When I went to the other gym today to train, I found a pleasant surprise: Leandro was there and ready to roll!
Nobody was around yet so I got him all to myself. He asked me if there was anything specific I wanted to go over, and of course having the opportunity to pick his brain on half guard sounded like great fun…
Running drills on a half-guard pass Leandro suggested to me
Then the new guys showed up and we had a class…
New guys have to discover their danger zones the hard way
After that I needed to change and do some boxing. Farrap was my trainer today and told me I needed to take things a little slower and focus on movement with him, not on knocking the crap out of a heavy bag and wearing myself out. I think Farrap underestimates himself and does not realize that doing movement and pad drills with him wears me out, maybe more than a heavy bag does.
Well deserved chicken nuggets…
By the end of things I had rolled for two hours, but most of it in a very light, fluid way with Leandro and boxed a decent 8-round workout (2 rounds shadow, 1 round heavy bag, 1 round movement, 2 rounds heavy mitts, 2 rounds focus mitts). I was extremely hungry, but felt otherwise very good and was highly satisfied with what I had accomplished today.