Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em

[Day 38]

Days off are fxcking weird. In high school we got weekends off officially because it was high school (I lived overseas, we had a pretty good school program and no real club opportunities outside of that so our official practices were weekdays only). I personally sort of warped between being a swimmer that swam on Saturdays or Sundays because there was an opportunity (optional private practices that one of our coaches led, practices led by one of my friend's personal coaches, etc.) and a swimmer that just took weekends off and was perfectly content to take weekends off. I have definitely lived a significant enough portion of my life being an athlete that just slept and ate all weekend and was still improving that I do realize that rest days are really NBD in the grand scheme of things if you're hitting the rest of your training right. Rest days make me a little antsy nowadays though.

I think part of it is that the sport I do now is a different beast from pool swimming insofar as the amount of base fitness required just to keep yourself from getting injured when you're training hard for a triathlon is huge. Consistency suddenly makes a bigger difference, not just in terms of long-term performance (which is really what consistency is important for in pool swimming) but in terms of your ability to just carry out training week to week. Because of that, my whole mentality towards training has changed a bit and it makes me so compulsive about not wanting to take breaks ever. Also breaks are sort of weird when you're used to doing something just about every day.

In any case, I am grateful for the day off, because I need it and I know that and I really feel that, but my brain is also like, let's just go for a short run. Short run? Please? Lol no. Especially feeling that when I was biking out/back from the tri team meeting today and all the runners were out in Forest Park doing their thing. We books flights for collegiate nationals and Wildflower today! Super pumped to get to travel and race in the spring. Eyes on the prize.

Gotta get back to hitting the books now, have a degree to earn and all...Happy Superbowl Sunday!

Much love,
Jess