My Journey With Weight Loss – Taking Recovery Time

I have to say one thing about this time of year is the sun is rising sooner. Today sunrise happened at 6:09am so when I hit the road in the morning at 6:00am it is almost daylight. Given the fact that there are sections of the promenade where I run that are very poorly lit it being light out really helps.

Yesterday I did an 8k which included 2 sets of fartleks. After the short sessions of interval training last week I was pretty confident in this run. And, I really pushed myself through at least 2/3 of the run focusing on keeping my pace strong. Much to my dismay when I checked the results when I got home my pace was only 6.7 kph. What? That just couldn’t be right so I looked at the detailed analysis. Yes I had a great pace through most of the run but the hills at the end had me down to a crawl. Hmm, I decided that today I would run a 5k using a different route with a hill at the beginning of the run and see if I couldn’t get my pace well above 7 kph. I was pretty sure I could accomplish this and prove to myself I can finish the 1/2 marathon in a decent amount of time.

I got up this morning determined to do my run and as I always do I checked my Fitbit for the impact from yesterday. This includes looking at my resting heart rate, my sleep score (it was a bit low last night) and my readiness score. Much to my surprise my readiness score was quite low, probably the lowest it has ever been and my Fitbit was recommending low intensity exercise today such as stretching exercises (yeah, not going to happen). I looked at the analysis it provides to realize this week I have really been pushing things with pretty high intensity workouts followed by a significant amount of walking later in the day. Shouldn’t this be a good thing?

I briefly considered ignoring today’s recommendation but the analysis clearly stated, your body needs recovery time. Then I thought of the fact that tomorrow I am doing a 14k with 3 sets of fartleks and I again really want to push myself to work on my pace. I weighed the risks in ignoring the Fitbit recommendation and ultimately decided to hit the treadmill for a walk. I did an hour of walking spending most of the time in my cardio zone so a decent workout but much lower key than what I planned. I’ll probably do another hour walk at some point today but will keep the intensity down in the fat burn zone. I figure that will satisfy my need to up my workouts without risking my body’s chance to recover from the past few days.

Despite my driving need to work as hard as possible I know that recovery time is important. By disregarding the need for the body to recover I would be significantly increasing my risk of injury and I have come so far that I am not willing to accept that risk.