Swollen, raggedy feet. Lest you think my running life is glamorous.
When you are training for a race, a good trainer will tell you that rest days are as important as run days. Rest can help alleviate soreness and prevent injury. For me, rest gives me something to look forward to, especially in the early days of training when it’s the hardest to be motivated.
What constitutes rest will depend on your fitness level. For a triathlete who is a couple of weeks away from the race, rest could look like 20 leisurely laps in the pool or a 1-mile jog.
That is not what rest looks like for me. That is what a workout looks like for me.
At my current stage of fitness, rest for me is a slow walk. I’m talking mosey-level walking. Like…barely moving and smelling all the roses. Or it’s an extended stretching period (i.e., 30-45 minutes instead of my usual 15-20), minus the preliminary walking/running. The last time I was running regularly, rest days were spent in the pool, doing side-stroke laps or treading water for a half hour.
Rest days can also be just rest. Not doing any activity other than your normal getting-through-the-day. Whatever gives your muscles a chance to relax and rebuild, that counts as rest.
That kind of rest is the easy part.
Good sleep and psychological rest are also important to overall wellness. These are trickier for me.
I do fall asleep more easily when I’m active, but I still wake up several times a night as per my usual habits. Later this month, I’ll be talking more about good sleep practice, sharing tricks learned from others and what worked for me when I was working night shift.
Psychological rest is often elusive for me. It’s not that I don’t know what works. It’s just that those things are hard to want when in the throes of distress. Especially when there is cake in the house. Cake, however, freaks all my chemicals out and does not help me.
*whispers* It’s so delicious, though…
I need to work on incorporating best practices for rest into my life.
What are your best practices?
M. Suzanne Terry 
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