Rest Days

This weeks been a lot more laid back than last week. I even had a complete days rest on Monday. This is a little unusual for me, I normally only have days of complete rest after actual events, but wit getting closer to the big one the plan is now for more intense workouts followed by periods of complete rest.

I’ve had people ask me about this before, and basically my rest days are normally structured in one of two ways. I’m a proponent of “active rest” especially given that I generally work on limited time and so the actually volume isn’t as huge as it could be. So in short “active rest” is basically exactly as it sounds, taking time off training but still staying active. The goal is to use the same muscles, but in a different way. For instance on an active rest day you might play a game of basketball or tennis. Or you might just go and chase the kids around the park, pick them up and carry them, run after the ball – it really doesn’t matter as long as you are being active but in a less intense way than in formal training, and in a way that uses your muscle groups in a different manner. These days are a great chance to have fun and be active with other people for a change.

The other method I use is one of timing, this is actually a surprisingly common approach as I know of at least a couple of other people who are independently doing the same thing. Essentially you structure your program so that once a week you have a workout session early in the morning, with the next session not being until the following evening, meaning you can effectively get in a rest period of around 36 hours without actually forfeiting a valuable day.

But this week was different and I actually took a whole day off and have tried to get to bed earlier to catch up on missing sleep. The kids haven’t completely corporated with a couple of disturbed nights this week, but I certainly do feel fresher now that I did at the start of the week.

That being said tomorrows session is a 180k + long ride. While this won’t be the biggest ride I’ve ever done, it will be the biggest ride done solo, so another milestone of sorts is almost in the bag – not many to go,