Craving Recovery

Last night was the worst.  I tossed, I turned.  I was hot. I was uncomfortable. My coach often asks me about sleep as a sign of how my training is going.  The night before last, I slept nearly 10 hours.  I took a nap yesterday.  I felt fine.  At least I thought I did.  However, inside of me, there was an epic battle going on.  The struggle to recover.  In many ways, it's no different from my struggle to recover from the mental obsession that I've had for over four months.

I went to bed looking forward to this morning's eight mile run.  Seven straight days of running eight miles.  It doesn't seem like a big deal.  It's only eight miles.  Granted, it's a hilly eight miles, so it's not easy, but it's not super hard either.  My body has been absorbing the training.  I'm not sore, at least not  too sore, and especially not sore in the way I feel after that first twenty mile run of the training season, or sore in the way I feel after completing an Ironman.  On the other hand, my sleep last night is exactly how I feel after doing an Ironman.  I toss, I turn. I'm hot. I'm uncomfortable.  It's odd.  It didn't hit me until I wrote it down (another reason to write every day).  Running eight miles a day for six straight days put me in the same hormonal state that my body is in after doing an Ironman.

The crazy thing is that I'm not sore.  I'm not even sure how fatigued I am.  Well, I'm definitely fatigued, but again, not on the scale of fatigue that I would feel after an Ironman, or even after a 20+ hour Ironman training week.  It's something else.  It's craving recovery.  Those were the words that crept into my mind this morning as I fought the urge to go back to sleep yet again. I kept working to remember those two words. Craving recovery.  One of the things I've learned in the past four and a half months is to pay attention to the first thing I'm thinking when I wake up.  To hold on to it.  To use it to define my day.  Today's words were craving recovery.

And now I have to prepare myself to go out for my seventh 8 mile run in the course of one week.  Seven days of running eight miles.  I'd already wondered what would come next.  Would I want to convert my week of 8 mile runs into eight days of 8 mile runs?  That is something I won't know until I wake up tomorrow.  That concept is certainly not looking good right now.  Nevertheless, we'll see.  One day at a time.  It will ultimately depend on what I'm thinking when I awaken tomorrow.  Today, I have one task at hand.  To go out and run another hilly eight miles.

Just to be clear, never in the last thirty years have I run eight miles a day for seven straight days.  I've run more total miles in a week.  I've certainly held my COVID obsession for more than seven straight days.  Yet, there is something special about this endeavor.  I've broken new ground.  I've pushed my body in a way that it hasn't been pushed before.  Which is why I wear my Kona shirt on todays run.  To remind me of the fact that we can push our limits.  But we also need to recover.  Ultimately, that's how we actually get stronger.  Maybe that's part of the message.  Maybe that's why I woke up thinking the words craving recovery.