Rest Day

I think I've written on this blog before about the importance of a rest day.  Wise runners know that a rest day is not a day when you don't get to go running, it's a day when you actually get strong, when your muscles respond to that stress you have placed on them, when you replenish your body with good food and adequate sleep.

"Rest, rest, perturbèd spirit!" - Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

I followed up my nine-mile rambling run on Saturday with back-to-back six-milers on Monday and Tuesday, and my legs are telling me to take a day off.  Monday's run included Big Bearpen, and then in the final mile I decided to pick up the pace to see how fast I could run these days after all the layoffs.  I was hoping to get well under 10:00, even 9:30, and I was surprised and delighted to hit a 9:12 pace.  Perhaps rest weeks might be a good part of a training plan from time to time!

Rest or not, I was disappointed to learn that the Shakespeare 5-K Run, benefiting Highlands Playhouse and scheduled for this coming Saturday, had been cancelled.  I would probably have been ready for this race!  Elizabethan garb (?) was suggested (which meant, to me, dragging out those tights I have finally packed away, which was not going to happen).  More than anything, though, I was disappointed not to receive the awesome shirt that was depicted on the Organizer's Facebook page:

 

Since I am a runner and a an unashamed bardolater, this was the perfect combination of two passions. Surely Shakespeare was a runner!

"If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come - the readiness is all." - Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2 

Now that's the voice of a man who has trained for a marathon, and knows what it means to stand on the starting line!