Ever have to force yourself to take a night off? (Read 1120 times)

I'm sure we've all experienced the lack of motivation or being tired and skipping a workout or two or at least wanting to skip. However have you ever experience the opposite where you don't want to take a night off, you feel great, you feel like running, but you know that you should take a rest. I get this feeling sometimes. I just had it on Monday night. I had run 5 days straight, nothing over 6.5 miles and total for the week was only 25 miles which is close to my avg.. Friday and Monday nights are usually my nights off, but my training schedules have been off the past few weeks. I knew I had a 5K race coming up on Wednesday night and would be a light workout on Tuesday and so I really felt like running, but then knew that I'd be running at least 8 straight days if I didn't take the night off. So my inner concious won and I forced myself to take the night off and I do mean forced myself! I instead did some strength work out at home. I'm just curious if anyone else has this conflict? Larry

Yeah I had to do that yesterday. My knee was giving me issues, and I was all ready to go out for a run because I was feeling great otherwise (did my first 30 mile week last week and want to keep it up!). But I figured I'm leaving for boot camp friday and their is no use hurting my knee. So I took the day off and went for a 4.5 mile walk instead lol.

I have been trying to talk myself out of running for the past 2 weeks. Not had a day off in this time. I am due one, but I feel fresh at some point in the day, and then think, what the hell. When I get home from work I am out the door

I take every night off.

I did that yesterday... I forced myself to take a day off. My body felt fine... I wanted to run BUT... why wait to rest until something makes me rest... isn't that just tempting fate a bit too much

I tend to try and let my body tell me when its time for a night off. If I'm feeling good, even if its a scheduled day off, I'll go out and do an easy 3. If I'm supposed to run, its an easy day (or even when its not) if my body is sluggish, I'm tired, and crabby, I take it off anyway. I really try to let my body regulate when its a day to rest and when its not. CC

x2. I never have to schedule. Some work/life thing will take care of that for me. No run this morning b/c I was up too late watching the Celtics become world champs!!!!! Had to get that in today.

Yes, I do this quite a bit to keep myself from overtraining. My body may feel good but I know better. I've been down that road with my first marathon and I don't want to do it agian.

I'd say that was a good decision. It's better to error on the side of safety by not running one workout than having to miss weeks due to an injury or having your races suffer due to overtraining. You will likely find that there are periods of time where you feel invincable , these can be dangerous because you end up doing more than what you have scheduled and you feel good. Sooner or later this catches up to you so you end up having make an unscheduled cut back .

There is a flipside to what I have said previously that some of you have pointed out. I think depending on the situation a decision has to be made. If there is an important race looming or you have a limited time to prepare for a race then its better to stay on the side of caution as I said above. However, if you are in a base training phase, or your not training for any specific race, its actualy good to take a chance and push yourself, especialy when you are feeling good. This is how you gain maturity as a runner, because you gain a better understanding of what your personal limts are. Do you really need a day off 2 days before a race? Can you handle more miles/week? This kind of stuff allows you to maximize your training later on.