In hindsight, this victory for my willpower and long-range planning was hardly one for my fitness as the rest seemed to have no effect on the rest of the year. I’m still committed to the idea of a break, however, so I’m trying something a little different this winter. Instead of ceasing all running activity for a set number of days, I’m simply emphasizing strength workouts ahead of running. I’m doing this because unlike my twelve-day rest, doing workouts seemed to have an effect throughout the year. When I was working out in 2019, I felt I ran better. The spirit of this winter’s plan is more along the lines of an athlete’s off-season rather than a student’s summer vacation.
Since I’m still running this isn't really a break. Let's call it a brake, in honor of my slowing down. The Brake started during the last week of January and I've limited my running to just a couple of miles at a time, maybe a 5K once or twice. If weather conditions are poor, I skip running, as I do when I'm busy. I’ve done my strength workout five or six days a week, including on days I’ve run (a departure from my usual routine). The goal is to lock in a habit of doing near-daily strength work because I think this is the key to my staying fit while running thirty-plus miles per week the rest of the year. My understanding of habits is that they take around three to six weeks to fully form, so that’s the expectation I have for my brake – sometime in the next two or three weeks, I should be ready to put my feet on the accelerator once again.
