I was planning to swim the morning for recovery, but my rib is still a little sore. I could go to the pool, try to swim, and if it hurts at all, stop. Or, I could just rest my rib today, get a massage, and let my body recover rom the last four days. I'm a little sore, but it's a "good" soreness. A little tightness in my calves, a little bit of glute soreness. Legs a little tired overall. All pretty much perfect. No soreness would mean I didn't have an adequate degree of training stress. In terms of the rib, I'm hoping that it's just a very localized strain, in which case it will certainly be completely better in three weeks, and mostly better within the next week, enough to not interfere with my training. Fortunately, and this is what always intrigues me, is that I have just put in some significant training stress over the past four weeks, starting with Ironman Boulder, followed by a very intense week about 10 days later, and then the past weeks efforts. The body needs to recover, though I'm not sure why I need to hurt myself in order to remind myself to do so!
The best news about my rib is that I'm able to get out of bed. When I've had a significant rib injury in the past, it's really hard to get up from a laying position for the first few days. While I'm a little sore getting out of bed, I'm able to do so, which is a significant positive sign right now. The decision on what to do today from a training perspective is all about risk:reward. The risk is aggravating my rib and causing myself a greater setback. The reward is purely recovery related at this point. Swimming is a great recovery exercise. I could also go for a walk today, which has become a pretty good recovery and training tool for me this past year.
There is also the mental aspect of all of this. I wanted to swim today, and I I sit here and write this, I keep thinking about giving a swim a shot today. That's my brain speaking, which also tells me that I tolerated the last four days of training pretty well. Also, as I write the, I'm watching today's stage of the Tour de France, which probably gives me a little mental training boost. So, I go back and forth. Rest, recovery, a little bit of training, but gentle, what do I do?
On a side note, after my run yesterday, I took a nap for nearly two hours. I went to sleep last night at a reasonable hour and got a solid 9+ hours of sleep. That's really the key for me right now. Sleep is arguably the single most important training and recovery tool that an athlete has at their disposal. It can be so easy to not pay attention to this, but that would be a huge mistake.
My wife just suggested that I give myself a couple days of rest. She's always right about almost everything, so that settles it. Plus, the Tour stage is actually pretty exciting as I watch it, so i can live a bit vicariously for the moment by watching a bike race.
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