Rain & Rest Days

Sometimes it's hard to take a rest day. I find it easier when I absolutely wear myself out, or when it's pouring down rain outside.

This Wednesday, I was up at 5:30, strength trained with Ed & Lynn for an hour, had Trigirl coffee with Lynn, showered, changed, and headed to school. Taught two classes at VCU, graded two class sets of Reader Responses, had a student conference, posted a week's worth of assignments on Blackboard, moved my car to avoid a ticket, and finally headed to University of Richmond three hours afater my VCU arrival. At UR, taught two classes, chatted with Trigirl/UR professor Susie, had two student conferences, read several drafts, met with a guy who also adjuncts at both VCU and UR and is in my VCU portfolio group. Breathe. Changed clothes in the Jepson basement bathroom, got back in the car, and headed out to West Creek to meet SanDee and Susie for a bike ride. Post-bike, headed to Mom & Dad's for a quick shower and snack, and made it to work at Hondo's minutes before my six o'clock shift. Worked until 12:30.

When my alarm went off the next morning at 5:30, I had no guilt whatsoever about resetting it for a couple of hours later and skipping my run.

I have actually learned from experience that I have much better runs/races if I take a few days off beforehand--it's just hard to make myself skip a workout. Unless I skip say, two months worth. Then it's hard to get restarted!

Thursday night I got a last-minute invitation to see Umphrey's McGee at the 9:30 Club in DC. Totally worth it! As I've learned from Shannon's "Flexible Schedule," sometimes there are better things to do than workout or even... grade papers.

It started raining while I was in DC and it hasn't stopped yet. In fact, my heart just jumped out of my body in response to a clap of thunder a few minutes ago. I'm not sure "clap" is the right word--my entire neighborhood shook, and it knocked SanDee out of the shower.

I thought the rain would keep me inside and encourage me to grade the portfolios I've been neglecting, but now a ride up to the "Big Nut" with SanDee, Susie, and both Deannas sounds more appealing. We all may be rethinking our race commitments for tomorrow--they are doing the Giant Acorn Sprint Triathlon, and I am running a 30K trail run at Pocahontas State Park with several other Trigirls--but this rain has got to stop sometime! In the meantime, I think three rest days is exactly what my inner coach called for.