Just what is a rest day?

For some a rest day is full of other activities. Choose one or more from this list: playing with the kids or the pets, a therapeutic long walk, cycling with your mates, horse riding, a trip to the coast to do some surfing. The psychological effect can be as important as the physical effect. Anything enjoyable which aids recovery from the other days of intense training. For others a rest day can include a light run; how about barefoot on the grass or barefoot on the sand with the grand-kids? When I was doing 12 running sessions a week 35 years ago, and working, my "rest day" was Friday when I would jog ~8k at lunchtime. No pressure, no timing, no Garmin (they weren't invented yet anyway).

This time last year I was planning to start a running streak. It started on 31/12/2011 and ended on 05/08/2012 - 217 days. The advantage of getting into a streak is the motivation it gives you to keep training. I got very fit after 2-3 months of it. The disadvantage is that you tend to overlook easy or recovery days. I had to stop because of an over-use impact injury.

Rather than planning another streak, I believe I can be just as motivated while incorporating rest days into the 2013 plan. I have drawn up possibly the final version of the plan which I intend following religiously for the first three or four months of 2013.

My Training Goals for the start of 2013

	type of training	where	time	distance
Monday	short intervals	Parliament House	4:30pm early run 5:30pm hills etc.	16k
Tuesday	tempo or faster	SFP or YCRC	6:00pm	10k
Wednesday	strength/stretch	F4L	9:30am gym
Thursday	race or sprints	AIS or SFP	6:00pm	10k
Friday	circuit swim	F4L AIS	9:30am gym 11:00am swim
Saturday	long	Acton or ad hoc	8:00am	32k
Sunday	km intervals	SFP	8:00am	12k
Total				80k

That's five varied but reasonably hard running days, a recreation/rest day on Wednesdays where I will work on my flexibility, and a second non-running day on Fridays where I will swim 1-2k after a vigorous gym circuit of stretching and strength work. Each week I might vary the program, e.g. weather forecasts might convince me to swap Monday & Thursday & Sunday intervals around.

Just one note for those training with me on Sundays: I won't be in Canberra on 6 January, but starting 13 January, I will be meeting at 8:00am instead of 8:30am