Rest Days Are My Friend

Another good run last night. It was a little tougher, but certainly not what I would call too difficult. I picked a different album and decided to run for six songs since I knew the songs were a little shorter. Oddly enough when I got to that point it was 21:36 so I ended up just doing the exact same routine as last night. This is encouraging to me to see that it is possible to put two of these workouts back to back. Which provides a perfect time to mention that I finally got my other running book that I ordered the same time as The Courage To Start. The new book is Running For Mortals. It is co-written by the same author as the first book, John Bingham. There is some rehashing so far, but it is a little more about what I would call the mechanics of running rather than the encouragement/ideology. I just finished reading about how slow muscles and bones grow, which is the big reason the authors advocate rest days (6-12 weeks for muscles and 6-12 MONTHS for bones). So armed with this new knowledge I will definitely be incorporating more rest days into my plan. My hang up with the rest days has been that I didn't feel like I was pushing myself enough to deserve them and I liked so much the post workout glow. Both of those I've found, are unacceptable reasons to skip the rest days. So anyway I kind of covered the plan for the future in my last post, but barring any pain/scheduling conflict I think my 7 day plan will contain 3 30 minute run days, 2 rest days, 1 long run, and a 1 mile run with walk after to round out 30 minutes. That should be enough to work me out without injuring me. Also I am giving next Tuesday a stern look and an unfriendly gesture, as it MAY be the first time I try running outdoors.