Weekend Updates

I'm slightly torn between continuing with my training or taking a brief rest. If you look at my recent entries you will note that my legs have been feeling quite dead, even after being fully warmed up. This is I think is a sign of extreme fatigue. Possible symptom of overtraining? Probably not, because mentally at least I feel fresh and motivated. Anyway taking the "Recovery" drink and modifying my diet has helped a bit, but not quite enough. I've increased my protein intake, because I suspect that with my months of high mileage, my legs, already experiencing tiny micro fiber tears, are possibly not recovering quickly enough from the previous days' workouts. I am gearing myself for the upcoming NB Pacesetters 15k in about 20 days time, so I'm training pretty hard.

Anyway my possible options are either:-

1) Taking a brief break from running; include cross training for maintenance of aerobic endurnace; but continue going to track for speed workouts; OR

2) Continue with my running and plod on. NOT a good idea because the workouts will suffer anyway; OR

3) Take a one day break and see how I feel. If all's well, then just continue with my usual running.

As I'm typing this my legs are feeling fine, so who knows?

Friday evening my intention was to run 12 laps at KLCC park. Running in the opposite direction with Newton, Rohaizad and later, Li Sar, I completed 8 laps because the legs were dead. Went home; had a Protein Bar, in addition to an extremely generous helping of fish fillet and rice. After completing my income tax form (yes I am one of the last minute Malaysians submitting my forms) I calculated (rightly or wrongly) that the IRB owed me monet instead of me owing them taxes. Went to bed feeling a tad uncomfortable with all that food in my stomach.

Went to the IRB office at Kg Attap. Was expecting a long queue but surprisingly took me less than 5 minutes to submit my form. Went home had a little breakfast and went online for a bit. Tey has updated Ajeep on the latest time trial. After that I felt that I needed another workout so I headed to the Holiday Villa gym, hopped onto the new treadmill there and ran. Grand total for Saturday- 17k. I then had to attend a talk at Tropicana- I was barely awake as the speaker went on for what felt like eternity although the talk was from 1:30pm to 5:30 pm and I arrived late (2:00pm). Thankfully my colleagues wanted to leave early and we left at 4:00pm- that also gave me an opportunity for a 1.5 hour nap. It still wasn't enough though and when I woke up I was still extremely tired. Had to attend a wedding dinenr at Westin so I wearily showered for the 4th time of the day (it has been an extremely HOT weekend) and changed. The night ended at about 3am for me.

Sunday I woke up at 845am and headed to church and thereafter joined my parents for breakfast. Walked around Atria for a while and bought the latest edition of Runners World. Bought it because there was a feature on Haile Gebrselassie moving up to the marathon. Nowadays I prefer Running Time, because it is a better read. Got a new CD too- the new Snoop Dogg album. Ran 5 easy kms. Legs still tired.

Another realisation as I type this- maybe I'm not resting my legs sufficiently. To quote Arthur Lydiard which perfectly sums up how I feel- "....the failure is muscular, not cardiac". The legs are dead although my heart and mind aren't.

OK will rest today (Monday).

Hope you had a good weekend.