Give it a rest

Burgess Park, where a recuperative cream tea is just £5.50

24.10.2014
Day 193

No being a gazelle in Greenwich Park for me at the crack of sparrows. Cycling around town on my errands and a work meeting was the sum total of my training. An impromptu rest day.

As I'd promised my poor, battered body I would listen to its creaks and groans, there is no point in any guilt tripping about the amount of training I have missed this past fortnight. It still feels odd, though, not running. Last night, as I set my alarm clock for 5am at midnight, I had a dawning realisation that a dawn rise would not do me any favours at all. My body was weak with fatigue, I'd just fallen alseep in the cinema, for pity's sake. The body was telling me in every way it knew how: aching, throbbing, tinnitus, yawns, gnawing hunger, it was screaming at me to give it a rest. So I listened to my body, as all the good coaches advocate, and sent out a text to my early morning fellow Gazelle of Greenwich Park, telling her I'd not be joining her at 6am for hill sprints.
I woke at 5.30am, stroked the cat, then turned over and sept purringly for another two hours. And my body said thank you.