Monday, June 20, 2011

What Does it Mean to Take Time Off?

Well, first of all, I guess I recently learned that it doesn't mean 'easy rides' or easy swims in the pool, like I thought I was doing. I was supposed to be taking time off, and really haven't been doing that at all. I had been doing easy rides, and easy swim, and it was driving me crazy, but I still thought that it counted as 'time off'. And I found out that it really doesn't. Now the worst part is that I would have done so much more if I knew that it wasn't time off. So, it makes me want to go out and run right now, I guess I still can since technically my time off doesn't start till Wednesday. It is going to be hard to take 4 days off. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are all supposed to be time off. Wow, that's hard. And I do have to examine the mental part of why that should be so hard. It's that I don't have a direction, a goal for what to do. But shouldn't my goals be coming from other places than just physical activity?

It's good mental and physical exercise I think to change things up and force yourself to do something that is not necessarily comfortable. Partially I thought that since sitting on the couch Craig said I'd produce about as much lactate in my blood as easy riding, I figured that I was taking time off.

Well, it'll be a hard few days, but necessary. So, what it means is just exactly what it means, to actually take time off. And the way my mind works is to constantly try to find a way around that and bend the rules, but sometimes I just have to do what is asked of me and have the faith and the grace to take it and listen.

So, right now, since I still have today and tomorrow that are officially 'not off' I think that I'm going to go out and run or do some of the things I've been wanting to do! More soon on this lactate diet that I'm on.

A little more context: I got my blood lactate tested on Friday, and found out that, while, I was in pretty good shape overall, my body was tired of all the lactate in my blood, and really needed a break from it, so now I'm on a lactate diet is what I'm calling it, and taking the time to give my body a break from it, and hopefully make my body less tired of it, by clearing some of it out of my system.

The mental difficulty of taking time off is something that I'm really going to explore and write about in the next few days, so if you are interested, stay tuned.