Lessons Unlearned

If it seems too good to be true...

Finishing my 12-mile accident yesterday, I was, embarrassingly, pretty high on myself. I could not believe that I was actually in shape enough to tackle that mileage, and certainly not at the time in which I finished. Perhaps I was further along in my training than I realized, and could progress more quickly through the coming steps.

I wrote my blog post, took a shower, ate all the things, and then sat down on the couch to do a little reading. When next I attempted to rise from said couch, my body reminded me of a lesson I've learned more times than I care to admit.

The fact that you can do something does not always mean that you should.

My hip was (still is, in fact) on fire. The bright side here is that if my hip and calf muscles are still hurting as they have been the last couple weeks, I can no longer feel them for the pain in my hip. That's a bright side, right?

The best solution for this problem is to keep moving, so I went grocery shopping which was not altogether unpleasant. Then, while dinner was in the oven, I did Day 2 of my 30 days of yoga. I'll talk more about that when I've made it a full week in. At the time, I wasn't sure if it helped anything, but I was fairly confident it didn't hurt. The ultimate decision would be, when I woke up this morning, would I do my 3-mile run.

That question was answered with my first movements of the morning. No running today, thank you very much. Instead, I headed downstairs and did Day 3, adding some additional hip stretches at the end. My plan is to do additional stretching throughout the day today in the hopes that I'm ready to run tomorrow, which is a planned rest day. I'm trying to stick to my mileage plan as closely as possible, so this one-day switch should not be a big issue. If, however, I don't feel up to it tomorrow either, then those three miles will be lost to the ether and I'll pick up the regular schedule again Wednesday.

You should never try to make up missed miles, according to popular (and sound) advice I've gotten, but I've never been good at listening to advice that tells me I have limits. I'm rapidly approaching (if not leaving far behind) the age where I can no longer ignore the wisdom of others. The lesson today is easy to follow: don't run if it hurts.

Let's hope I've learned that one at least.