Happy Mon­day every­one! Hope you had a great weekend.

Today, I would like to chat a bit about the impor­tance of recov­ery in train­ing. Yes­ter­day was a per­fect exam­ple of my body cry­ing out to me for rest. Sun­days, are my long run days, and so, as per usual, I hopped on the tread­mill (I don’t run out­doors in the win­ter) and pressed start. From my very first few strides, I knew that this was going to be one long, ardu­ous run. I know, as all you run­ners must know, that the first 10 – 20 min­utes of a run your legs usu­ally feel slug­gish and your brain is sig­nalling you to stop but you push through because the legs begin to loosen up and even­tu­ally, you fall into your run­ning groove. Yes­ter­day was not the case. My legs felt heavy and tired through­out the entire run; my glutes were tight and sore and men­tally, it took every ounce of strength and deter­mi­na­tion to fin­ish. At the end, I felt com­pletely depleted; a far cry from a runner’s high, let me tell you.

Now I can­not tell a lie; I almost never take a rest day unless I’m phys­i­cally unable to train. I know that I should, yet I don’t and for what­ever rea­son, I seem to be able to push through on the days when I’m feel­ing low on energy. Mon­days, for exam­ple, I only teach a core strength class and usu­ally just train back and shoul­ders on my own with no car­dio work, so I kind of feel like that’s an active rest day. Well, it’s not and so today I am tak­ing a com­plete rest day (other than my class this morn­ing.) I’m hop­ing that I will feel recharged and reju­ve­nated come tomor­row morning.

I’d like you to check out this link below which is writ­ten for triath­letes but the infor­ma­tion can cer­tainly be used in your train­ing program.

http://​www​.train​ings​mar​ton​line​.com/​i​m​a​g​e​s​/​F​r​e​e​_​T​r​i​a​t​h​l​o​n​_​A​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​T​r​i​a​t​h​l​o​n​_​T​r​a​i​n​i​n​g​_​R​e​c​o​v​e​r​y​.​p​d​f

On another note, I made a really yummy muesli yes­ter­day that is so easy and good for you. I’m not a big dairy fan but I must say, Greek yogurt is pretty darn good and has a decent amount of pro­tein. You can cer­tainly change up your fruits; berries would be deli­cious as would the addi­tion of coconut, seeds and nuts.

Hope you enjoy it!

Muesli:

2 sweet apples, grated

1 can (500 mL) unsweet­ened crushed pineapple

1 cup low­fat Greek yogurt (plain or flavoured — I used vanilla)

1 cup large flake rolled oats

2 tsp cinnamon

Stir ingre­di­ents together in a large mix­ing bowl. Dig in!