My last treadmill run was all the way last Thursday (today being the following Tuesday). After 3 treadmill workouts in the prior week, I wanted my legs to be nice and rested for my personal trainer session Monday morning. Between the yardwork I did on Sunday, and a set of varying physical activities on Monday, my body was pretty beat up yesterday. I was planning to go to the gym today before work, which would have been my only chance to run for the day, but instead decided to take another rest day. I want to be really careful as I start to build up, to lessen my chance of injury.
I was really impressed with the set of activites I did on Sunday and Monday:
- Sunday yardwork – with Saturday being a yucky day, I spent a lot of time on Sunday digging, cleaning and preparing several spots on my lawn for new grass seed, which also included hauling bags of dirt from Home Depot and spreading around on those spots. This work was very upper body intensive!
- Monday personal trainer – as usual, my trainer put me through the paces, although we had to take it easy on the upper body, as my shoulders were very sore!
- Monday with NYC Cool Roofs – my company had a volunteer day, and I chose to work on a project with NYC Cool Roofs. They work with buildings around the city to paint a reflective white coating on the roofs to reflect the heat back into the atmosphere, keeping the building cooler, replacing the typical black surface, which absorbs heat. We coated a 12,000 square foot roof in the Bronx, which entailed hours working out in the sun, painting half the day with a paintbrunch, and half the day with a roller. While not strenuous work per say, still very active and upper body intensive work. It was amazing to feel the difference between the old black, which was very hot to the touch in the sun, and the new white, which was actually cool to the touch. Three years running, what a great group and effort they make.
- More yardwork – We finished by 4pm, so I drove back to my yard in NJ, where I worked on clearing spots in my backyard. Thankfully I had less than an hour and so while I worked hard, I didn’t kill myself again.
- Softball – Back to NYC for a 9pm softball game, where I did a lot of running and throwing. We lost, sadly, but it was a lot of fun, and played in the shadow of the Tribute in Lights on the eve of 9.11
Whew, so that was my exhausing Sunday and Monday. Now with 2 days of rest, I expect to get back into my running routing tomorrow. My treadmill workouts so far have been 4 half mile repeats at 8:30 pace. I hope to increase now to 5 or 6 repeats with 1 or 2 of the middle ones getting down to 8 pace. Will let you know how it goes…
