The falling off the balance beam comes from not taking your recovery days seriously. By serious, I mean purposely slowing down and letting your body bounce back from speed or long run efforts. Sometimes this is easy to do as your body will scream at you that it needs a break; other times there can be a delayed onset of fatigue. You can be tricked into thinking you should run faster on a recovery day. I call this faster than recovery pace “no man’s land” running. Yes it takes a little bit of patience and it can take some of the fun out of running. Some runners call this “junk miles”. I disagree, unless you are completely spent and can not run, then running slow for recovery is smart miles. If you are serious about a goal race and want to train properly you have to build in days of slow running or even easy cross training on a bike or elliptical is a good idea. A vicious cycle can develop where you never properly rest to get ready for the next hard effort. The hard efforts become exponentially tougher and pretty soon you are watching from the sidelines.
There are some affirmations that go through my mind on recovery days to keep me motivated. For example, I often think of recovery runs as the glue or the mortar that holds my running plan together or it is the base of a pyramid or foundation of a house that keeps everything in place. So the next time you are out on a slow, boring recovery run, realize that this run is serving one of the most important components in running. If you can restrain from pushing the pace you are already ahead of your competition.
“Today’s workout is only as good as yesterday’s recovery” – Deena Kastor
