Today, I diligently followed the instructions from Team in Training. I rested. It felt a little bit strange. Friday is not my usual “off” day, but the process was made easier by back-to-back-to-back conference calls until noon. When you can’t get out the door, rest becomes easier to achieve.
As part of my training, I’m looking for new sources of protein in my diet. I track my eating through The Daily Plate on Livestrong.com, and if it’s taught me anything, it’s that my protein consumption isn’t sufficient to build muscle mass. I’m not much of a meat eater, so it’s an ongoing struggle to find protein sources that aren’t dairy-based.
I tried to vary things up today by cooking tuna steaks for the first time ever. The good news: my 3-year-old son didn’t protest the introduction of fish into his diet… not too much, anyway. The bad news: I’m not inclined to eat much of the tuna, either.
It was a lovely dinner, though, with the nicely grilled tuna accompanied by a salad of mixed greens, spinach, feta, fresh peaches and fresh apricots tossed with high-quality balsamic vinegar. Very fresh and summery, and eaten at the patio table as the sun dipped behind the trees. Spring has been slow to arrive, but it was a great, low-key way to kick off the Memorial Day weekend.
Tomorrow we’ll be heading to the coast for an impromptu getaway. If all goes according to plan, I’m hoping to do my 3-mile slow run on the beach. That should make for some sore calves on Sunday morning!
Did you do an actual beach run? RW cautions against sand if you’re prone to injury (uh, me), as the torque on your lower body shoots up like 10x. So I don’t jog more than a couple of hundred yards, real easy, mostly to admire the view. That said, sand running is supposed to fire up/condition your leg muscles like no other surface. So, it’s bad but it’s good.
Ran just over 3 miles on packed dirt trails along the coast. Didn’t run on the sand, but I did a bit of sand walking, unknown distance since I didn’t have the Nike+ all rigged up.
Sunday is supposed to be a non-run cross training day. Not sure how to do that here, so maybe I’ll just take a long walk.
After all my injury adventures, I’m hesitant to go back running on the Coastal Trail along the SF shoreline, which is really spectacular scenery: sheer drop-off to ocean, sound of waves, trees, fallen trees, wooden steps, narrow lanes, clearings. But it’s steep in places, crowded and hard to pass walkers. I can’t afford a wrong step. For first time ever, I’m following a very formal weekly plan: long run, short speed/interval run (like my 5K), tempo run (where you run at goal race pace for predetermined distance), hills. Kinda takes the fun out of just running, as each outing seems to have a specific purpose. But I’m deliberately staggering every run, putting 1-2 days between everyone; whereas, in the past, I might run 7 days straight. I know now that’s just no good, even if the runs were all short.